Monrovia – Liberian students have once again performed dismally in the annual regional high school exams, the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) administered examinations.
Report by J.H. Webster Clayeh – [email protected]
There were obstacles ahead of the exams when it was first cancelled due to fraud after some exams papers leaked days before the start.
With this year’s poor performance, the West African Examination Council (WAEC) Liberia office is accusing the media for contributing to the mass failure.
In May, two days to the WAEC Examination all nine subjects of the exams were stolen from Kolona Mission, where it was kept prompting WAEC to reprint the exam which was later run in June.
But during the test it was reported that WAEC did not reprint and instead was administering the same exams earlier canceled because of inscription of the May date on the exam papers.
Speaking at the Ministry of Information regular press briefing Thursday, the Head of WAEC, John Y. Gaybolor said after the test was stolen they galvanized resources and dispatched some of their members to ensure that the papers were rerun, brought in, packed and administered as was scheduled.
“Surprisingly, on the day that the test was administered some of you here called my attention that we administered the same papers that were rooted. If you don’t know, ask question. Your assertion that the examination was the same papers, it misled good number of our candidates”.
He added: “The name of our examination even if it had been administered in December is called the May exams whatever year it had been administered.
The candidates resulted taking those same rooted paper and before we gave them the answer booklets they were already shading, so you had fed them with the wrong information”.
Mr. Gaybolor further said some of the students gave answers that were contrary to the questions. “Some of them answered more than the number of questions that were set in the question booklets”, Gaybolor said.
He continued: “If we had the time to read some of those responses you will now go back to put yourself together so that tomorrow; because the children that will be prepared are to take over and we should not mislead our children”.
Giving the result the Head of WAEC said out of 42,927 candidates 16,072 passed resulting into 34.48 percent while 22,671 failed resulting into 48.64 percent and 16.88 results were withheld for what he called collusion practiced by some of the schools during the test.
“51 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” the head of WAEC disclosed.
According to the Head of WAEC no candidate obtained division one but said ten candidates obtained division two.
Firestone Senior High School produced the highest with four students hitting division two. He also added that 35 schools had a hundred percent passing rate.
“Also the Best Performing candidate for the May 2016 is Koiwu, Kezelee of the Firestone Senior High School. He obtained seven credits and has a Score of 516.8” he added.
