Ghana clears WAEC excellence awards

For the fourth consecutive years in a row, students from Ghana emerged first, second and third best candidates in the 2015 May\June West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) conducted by the West African Examinations Council, WAEC, winning all the three WAEC Excellence Awards for the year. Surprisingly also, they are all from the same Wesley Girls’ High School in Cape Coast. A total of 1,883,775 sat for the exam in the sub-region. The trio are Miss Jessica Ayeley Quaye (1st Prize), Miss Ruth Ewura-Ama Awadzi (2nd Prize) and Miss Danielle Amo- Mensah (3rd Prize) As usual, the exam was held simultaneously in all the five member countries of WAEC including Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Liberia and Nigeria, which usually presents over 70 per cent of candidates for the exams on yearly basis.

This revelation was contained in a press release issued by the Head of Public Affairs Department at the headquarters office of the examination body in Ghana, Mr. Abiodun Aduloju in respect of the 64th Annual Meeting of the examination body held in Ghana, recently. He also disclosed that the first prize winner, Jessica Quaye won the Augustus Bandele Oyediran Award for the Best Candidate in West Africa. Aduloju noted that all the three had since been honoured with their prizes at the council’s annual meeting which had the President of Ghana, John Mahama in attendance as a keynote speaker. Nigeria hosted the last year meeting on behalf of Liberia which was originally billed to host it but for the Ebola outbreak in the country.

Aduloju, however explained that the council which is the highest decision making organ of the organisation condemned pockets of malpractices that are still occurring during exams in various member countries and consequently advised WAEC Research Department, universities as well as other research institutions in member countries to focus more on critical national issues with a view to finding solutions to them. “The council also appealed to the researchers and research institutions to make their research reports available to guide the member governments in policy formulation and implementation while appreciating the move by the government of Liberia to rid the school system of unqualified teachers by retraining crop of auxiliary teachers on ground,” Aduloju stated. The council holds its meeting annually in rotation among the five member countries..