May/June 2021 exams unlikely to hold: WAEC

WAEC said the effect of the coronavirus pandemic is still very much felt in the education sector.

News Agency of Nigeria • April 6, 2021

Photo of secondary school-students used to illustrate this story (Photo credit: The Guardian Nigeria)

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) says its 2021 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for school candidates, earlier scheduled for May/June, may not hold.

The Council’s Head of National Office (HNO), Patrick Areghan, gave the hint while announcing the release of results of the 2021 first series of the WASSCE for private candidates on Tuesday in Lagos.

According to Mr Areghan, the effect of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is still much felt in the education sector.

He noted that the entire education calendar has been distorted and, therefore, may not be possible to conduct the examination as scheduled.

He stated that a convenient international time table for the conduct of the examination will soon be released.

He then appealed to all the school principals and proprietors to keep to the stipulated timelines for the enrolment of candidates for the examination.

According to him, it is important to re-emphasise the role of Continuous Assessment Scores (CASS) in the computation of candidates’ results.

“All schools are advised to get this aspect of the registration process right, in order to make the entry processes seamless.”

Giving a breakdown of the results, Mr Areghan said that 7,690 candidates entered for the examination which was conducted between February 15 and March 11 and that 7,289 out of the 7, 690 candidates actually sat for the examination at 252 centres across the country.

According to him, the drop in the figure is attributable to the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He said that out of the 7,289 candidates that sat for the examination, the results of 599 were withheld in connection with various reported cases of examination malpractice.

According to him, 7,174 candidates had their results fully processed and released while 115 others had a few of their subjects still being processed due to some errors traceable to them.

He said that efforts were being made to complete the processing to enable all the affected candidates to get their results fully processed and released subsequently.

The collection of certificates for the WASSCE for private candidates, he said, would be based on request online via the Electronic Certificate Management System platform (e-CertMan).

Mr Areghan said details of the simple procedures had already been made available to the public.

(NAN)

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