2025 WASSCE: WAEC releases correct results; 62.96% pass English, Maths

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has released fresh and correct results of candidates who sat this year’s May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

The examination body released the fresh results on Friday in Lagos, calling them the authentic results of candidates who sat the school-based examination.

Unlike the results earlier released, where only 38.32% out of the total 1,969,313 candidates obtained credits and above in five major subjects, including English Language and Mathematics, 62.96% of the candidates actually have the pass grade.

The examination body said the discrepancy in the two results was due to a technical glitch, noting that the authentic results of candidates in the exam were those released afresh.

This school-based exam, however, has been marred with controversy right from the conduct of the exam, particularly the English Language Theory, which some candidates wrote in the odd hours due to delays.

Announcing the release of the fresh results at a news conference in Yaba, the Head of National Office, WAEC Nigeria, Dr Amos Dangut, maintained that a total of 1,969,313 candidates sat the examination, out of which 1,239,884 candidates, representing 62.96%, now obtained credits and above in a minimum of five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.

Of this number, 582,065, representing 46.95%, were male, while 657,819, representing 53.05%, were female candidates.

A comparison of the percentage of candidates in this category in the same school-based exam in 2024 and 2025 revealed a slight decline of 9.16% in those who obtained the same grade last year, which was 72.12%.

Just as announced earlier, a total of 191,053 candidates (representing 9.75% of the total number of candidates who sat the exam) are still being withheld in connection with various reported cases of exam malpractice, and their cases are being investigated to determine whether to eventually release or cancel their results.

This is 2.17% lower than the 11.92% recorded in the same exam in the 2024 and 2023 diets, respectively.

Dangut, however, explained how the Council got to know about the discrepancies in the two results, saying: “During an internal post-examination review of our earlier released results, some discrepancies were discovered in the grading of serialised papers.

“We had earlier informed you that the Council embarked on an innovation (paper serialisation) already deployed by a national examination body.

“The Council, being an accountable, transparent, and credible organisation, further investigated all the serialised papers (Mathematics, English Language, Biology and Economics Objective Papers) and discovered that a serialised code file was wrongly used in the printing of English Language Objective Tests (Paper 3), which resulted in them being scored with wrong keys. Nevertheless, the schools that sat for this exam with their students using the computer-based mode were not affected by this error.

“Consequently, the observable decline in the performance of candidates earlier announced was partly traceable to this absurd situation.

“The Council sincerely apologises for this imbroglio and deeply regrets the emotional and mental dismay it might have caused the affected candidates and all stakeholders.

“We have been able to fix the anomaly, and candidates can now access their results on the portal (www.waecdirect.org).”

He, however, promised that WAEC would ensure it guards against the recurrence of this huge and embarrassing error in the future.

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