Monrovia – Despite pronouncement by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) that performance in the recent regional exams was dismal and that no candidate obtained the top mark, WAEC has rescinded that its earlier pronouncement was an error.
Report by Bettie K. Johnson-Mbayo/ [email protected]
Student Armstrong Gbessage of J.J. Roberts United Methodist School in Monrovia obtained Division-1 in the latest exams results after his school had challenged the previous results publicized by WAEC.
Speaking on a local radio Wednesday, the Assistant Head of WAEC Test Administration Division, Dale Gboto, said WAEC is a human institution and as such is not infallible.
He said WAEC takes full responsibility for the incident, adding that there are current viewings of the inner workings of the office.
He stated: “When we first released on Aug 4, 2016, we said of 42,927 candidates 16,072 passed resulting into 34.48% while 22,671 failed resulting into 48.64% and 16.88 results were withheld for collusion practiced by some of the schools during the test.
“Fifty-one schools totaling 7,654 candidates’ results are being withheld for alleged collusion. Additional 216 candidates’ results are being withheld for being involved in examination irregularity,” he added.
“Immediately after we released the results to the schools, there were many issues raised by the school heads, some were flagged by the media,” Gboto said.
“We received requests for revision, but we, as procedural institution, there are provisions that require for unsatisfactory result to be reviewed.”
“We found out that, so many stakeholders didn’t come to challenge the results but we appreciate those who requested for results to be challenged.
“If we had not received this request, we wouldn’t have known this guy [from J. J. Roberts United Methodist School had reached Division-1.
we received the request, we started to review the scripts, we just don’t call you to view the scripts, and we check the objectives before essay script.
Our objective component are marked by machine, while essay are marked by human beings, there we have a challenge in that direction.”
Gboto said that the problem had shown that there is clearly that their system needs to be updated to reduce human involvement in marking the papers.”
“After we did the objective component which there were no problem his English objective component out of 100, he had 84 “
“We went and look at the essay and he had 15, so we decided to treat the review of the papers holistically”, he disclosed.