WAEC Flags Growing Parental Role in Exam Malpractice: The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has expressed worries about the increasing involvement of parents and guardians in helping their children in exam malpractice.
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) is responsible for the conduct of national and International examinations in the country.
Some of the parents buy or get the questions for the various examinations to help their children pass the exams, this is evident in the case where they start performing badly when admitted to the university.
Speaking on EduTalk Show WAEC’s Deputy Registrar for the Arts and Business Subject Department said, ‘’Buying of question papers does not come from WAEC, but we know parents go around looking for them. It is now a canker, families are involved. I cannot just imagine a parent going around looking for question papers for their child to pass an exam. If the system requires students to think critically before answering questions, it becomes difficult for parents to justify buying exam questions.”
For this reason, the newly implemented curriculum will be more of developing critical thinking and discarding the ‘chew and pour’ way of learning.
It is not easy to keep questions from being leaked. WAEC faces a lot of security breaches when transferring questions to the examination centers. Some are, for example, the intercepting of the question papers for photos and these images of the questions are sent out on social platforms like Telegram and WhatsApp.
“Some invigilators even snap the questions inside the exam room and send them out for solutions. There’s a whole syndicate involved. They all come together with an understanding that this is the game they want to play,” he said. From Lawrence Dogbetse, schools, and students are educated on the examination of malpractices and their consequences. Their officers also from time to time visit schools to strength awareness and reinforce their internal operations to protect exam papers from being leaked to the public and to those who are not authorized to have it.