Educationist Prof Stephen Adei has suggested that the decline in the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results may be due to stricter exam supervision, which has exposed long-standing weaknesses in Ghana’s education system.
Speaking on the Joy FM Super Morning Show on Monday, December 1, Prof Adei explained that stronger monitoring may have limited widespread cheating, which often inflates results.
“The reality could be that invigilation and vigilance were better during the last examination, because examination malpractice is so widespread that a lot of the passes we see depend on whether WAEC has been more vigilant and put in a better system,” he said.
He added, “Our results depend not so much on the students’ performance, but also on how many people get away with murder. The decline may not be worse performance, but much better supervision of the examination.”
Prof Adei stressed that the underlying problems in Ghana’s education system must be addressed. “This is not something that is happening today. It has been with us for a long time. Some of us have been talking about it after the examination. Everybody thinks we hear it, and then it goes quiet,” he said.
He pointed to foundational weaknesses at the primary level as the root cause. “The main source of the problem happens at the basic school level before secondary school. The foundation in public schools is what the World Bank describes as ‘schooling without learning’,” he noted.
Prof Adei warned that many pupils are being promoted without acquiring the necessary skills. “Generally, we don’t have the right material for about half of them. It’s almost like a wholesale promotion. Unless we tackle the fundamental issue of producing almost illiterate students at the basic level, these results will be the best we can hope for,” he cautioned.
He cited his personal experience: “In fact, in the branch of our school in my village, when they come from public schools, we spend one full year bringing them up to the normal JHS standard before they proceed to senior secondary school.”
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has confirmed a national education concern with the release of the provisional 2025 WASSCE results, revealing a worrying surge in the outright failure rate (Grade F9) across all four core subjects compared to 2024.
