The West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), which will commence on August 16, is estimated to attract over 1.6 million students.
Mr Patrick Areghan, the Head of National Office (HNO) of the West African Examination Council (WAEC), revealed the statistic in a Sunday interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
Areghan stated that the council was working around the clock to accommodate some schools that were still having late registration issues.
He said that the situation was having an impact on the council’s activities.
Despite these obstacles, Areghan said the council was working with relevant stakeholders ahead of the 2021 WASSCE to ensure a smooth WASSCE for school applicants.
“As I have always said, conducting examination is not a tea party. It is a huge task and requires collaboration of all critical stakeholders, including the media.
“It requires a lot of preparations and even more, especially in the face of the rising cases of insecurity and the resurgence of Coronavirus pandemic in the country.
“In conducting this examination, we also want to ensure that the lives of all those involved, including council’s staff, and materials are properly secure.
“Our arrangement for the successful conduct of our upcoming examination, therefore, is in top gear as we are ensuring that we do not leave any stone unturned,” he said.
Areghan pointed out that conducting examinations necessitated the expenditure of money and other resources.
According to him, the entire test procedure is a big financial burden, from printing examination materials, distributing them, and maintaining security, to recruiting ad-hoc employees and producing certificates.
WAEC will continue to do everything possible to keep operating, according to Areghan.
According to the HNO, WAEC members have been meeting to fine-tune methods that will ensure a smooth examination.
He urged schools and candidates to prepare thoroughly for the exam, stressing that the council would not allow any actions that could jeopardize the examination’s integrity.
”There is no hiding place for cheats.
“We want to warn schools, students and even supervisors and invigilators that there will be no hiding place for anyone who tries to go against laid down rules for the conduct of this examination.
“We will surely catch that person, no matter where the malpractice is being carried out.
“We have in-built mechanisms to detect every act of cheating; cheats, when caught, will not get their results.
“Even if you cheat in our objective test, we will catch you, using technology. This technology is called the Item Deferential Profile; it has been there for quite sometime,” he said.
The HNO encouraged parents not to encourage their children or wards to cheat in exams by paying for the questions to be sourced from fraudsters.
”We have carried out a lot of sensitisation, reaching out to parents not to give money to their children in an attempt to patronise rogue website operators and other mischievous individuals, who promise to help get to WAEC questions for them, before the examination.
“There is nothing like that. Some even go as far as saying WAEC normally posts questions on the internet.
“This is laughable and misleading. We have tried as much as possible to enlighten the world that there is nothing like ‘miracle centre’.
“This is a creation of the society and not the council.
“It may be existing in their subconscious but does not exist in our dictionary,” he said.
According to him, there hasn’t been a leak of council test questions in Nigeria since the last time it happened several years ago.
He claimed that what some members of the public referred to as “leakage” during the WASSCE was the result of internet fraudsters who registered and sat in the same hall as genuine candidates.
The HNO warned that WAEC would not hesitate to hand any suspect over to the police.
“We have a way of detecting those posting these things to the internet and go after them; that is why we always need the collaboration of the police,” Areghan said.
Source: The Vanguard.