Examination malpractice is a societal problem which must be tackled by all and should not only be laid on the doorsteps of examination assessment bodies, Reverend Samuel Nii Nmai Ollenu, the Head of the West Africa Examination Council, has stressed.
He said the act is a threat to the integrity of examination bodies, and as such must use all the available tools at their disposal to improve the authenticity of the examinations they conduct.
Reverend Ollenu was speaking to The Finder after his appointment as President of the Association for Education Assessment in Africa (AEAA) at the end of the association’s 33rd annual conference held in Accra.
The five-day conference, on the theme ‘Quality Assurance in Educational Assessment in an Era of Rapid Change,’ was to promote best practices, culminating in the improvement of assessment, testing and examining within the member countries.
At the end of the conference, the association took cognisance of the fact that examining bodies face various challenges that go beyond their individual capabilities to handle and, for that matter, require a collective approach and collaboration with other stakeholders in tackling them.
Discussed at the conference were two main issues: the association to fall under the aegis of African Union (AU) and the addition of French-speaking countries to the association.
It stressed that they require co-operation and not competition, and pledged to share information on best and leading practices in the field of assessment, as well as adopt those within their means to strengthen assessment tools and enhance the validity and reliability of their tests.
In line with this, it agreed to find ways of assessing higher-order cognitive abilities that would enable students apply knowledge acquired to real-life situations; therefore, it is determined to research into finding reliable tools for assessing the nascent traits of soft skills.
The association also recognised the need to develop strategies to combat the ever-increasing menace of examination malpractices in our examinations, not losing sights of the possibility of using computer-based tests.
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