The Minister for Education, Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, has urged the West African Education Council (WAEC) to implement the Item Differentia Profile Software, piloted last year, in the 2016 examinations.
The software, she explained, would enable the council detect cheating in objective tests, which hitherto went undetected.
She further urged the council to put in place the necessary security arrangements to ensure that this year’s examinations are conducted leakage-free.
Professor Opoku-Agyemang, speaking at the 2015 West African Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) Distinction Awards ceremony, commended the council for its continuous recognition of excellence among the youth over the years.
“When leakages occur, they erode public confidence in the assessment process and credibility of certificate issued by the council,” she bemoaned.
With regard to that, she called on the council to leave no stone unturned to ensure that the trust and confidence of stakeholders in the outcome of the examinations are maintained.
She was delighted to note that for the fourth time in a row students from Ghana will be receiving all the prizes for the International Excellence Awards at the formal opening of the 64th Annual Council Meeting, to be held in Accra today.
The candidates are all from Wesley Girls’ Senior High School, and, according to her, that clearly confirms the high quality of education in the country.
Very Reverend Dr Samuel N.N. Ollenu, Head of the Ghana Office of WAEC, noted that the WAEC Endowment Fund is the main sponsor of the Distinction Awards, with one of its objectives being the provision of prizes for awards to candidates who distinguish themselves in the council’s national and international examinations.
That, he added, is in fulfilment of a part of the council’s mission, which is “encouraging academic and moral excellence among the youth”.
He expressed his appreciation to Universal Merchant Bank Limited, which has since 2014 entered into an agreement with the council to offer full scholarship to the first winner to pursue tertiary education in any university in Ghana.
Reverend Ollenu was happy to announce that three of the national winners have made Ghana proud as they took the first, second and third positions at the international level, making Ghana sweep all the three awards at that level once again.
“This makes Ghana the only country among the WAEC member countries to have swept all the three awards for four times running, setting a record which any member would find extremely difficult to equal in years to come,” he added.
He used the opportunity to refute the notion that the failure of candidates is the success of WAEC because WAEC wants them to fail and come back to write the exams several times so it can make more money out of them.
Describing the notion as a fallacy, he stated that, on the contrary, WAEC wants the candidates to pass because their success is its pride, and that is the reason behind the Distinction Awards ceremony.
Source: The Finder
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