WAEC and SSCE students’ poor performance

A lot of Nigerians, especially parents and guardians, are cross with the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) over the initial horrible results of the 2025 Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSCE) which it released recently. Not a few are blaming the poor performance on some poor quality decisions the examination body made while students were writing the examination. For instance, some of the students reportedly wrote their exams under very difficult conditions, with many writing papers that were meant to be written in the morning or afternoon in the night, and relying on flashlights or candles for lighting because there was no electricity  In the words of the chairman of the Lagos State wing of the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Comrade Akintoye Hassan: “Let us first take a look at the condition under which some of the candidates sat for some of the papers, especially the English Language paper. The Council said it discovered that the paper leaked, and instead of cancelling it, it went ahead to let students write it at odd hours. The students, who had conditioned their minds to write the paper in the morning, were delayed till evening and even night in some cases.” Surely, WAEC had the choice of cancelling the leaked paper and rescheduling it to a later date, but it didn’t, and now it is talking of reviewing the results over alleged technical glitches in its operation.

  The review of the results by WAEC, ostensibly after it discovered technical issues in the results, has shot up the critical number from 38.32 percent to 62.96 percent. Even at that, many believed the review was an afterthought contrived to enhance the grades of students in order to atone for the initial poor results thought to have been caused by the examination body.  This has, in a sense, cast a pall of doubt on the integrity of the improved results. It is important to stress that such a step does not serve any useful purpose other than lowering the standard of education in the country. Students reportedly wrote the exam in darkness, a situation that was patently avoidable with proper planning and good quality decisions. What kind of results was WAEC expecting after subjecting candidates to writing exams under such difficult circumstances?

Why should young people be in school writing an exam till late in the night?  Again, during the exam period, students are supposed to be calm, composed and ready for a mentally engaging exercise, but that was not the case during the exam under reference. Students were instead subjected to conditions that were not intellectually stimulating. Thus, the initial poor results were not totally unexpected. Nonetheless,  putting the entire blame on WAEC would be tantamount to playing the ostrich because performance has been traditionally poor. The current confusion and the challenge of recurrent poor performance of students in the SSCE seem to be provoking debates on a fundamental issue regarding the propriety or otherwise of the metrics being used to determine good or poor performance in the SSCE. For instance, in the earlier results released by WAEC, out of the 1,969,313 candidates who sat for the examination, only 754,545 candidates, representing 38.32 percent, obtained credits and above in a minimum of five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics, whereas a more thorough scrutiny of the results shows that about 87 percent of candidates actually scored a minimum of five credits with or without English Language and/or Mathematics. This figure is still higher than the improved statistic of 62.96 percent which WAEC announced as the percentage of students who had a minimum of five credits, including English Language and Mathematics after the review and corrections of what it termed discrepancies in the earlier results.

 The critical question is whether or not these two subjects are not being misapplied in determining the success or otherwise of the outcomes of the SSCE. To be sure, the English language is very crucial, since it is the official language in this clime while mathematics is also important for critical thinking. However, must an art-subject-inclined student write the same version of mathematics exam as a science-oriented student who wants to study to become an engineer in the future? Or must a science student hoping to study, say, microbiology,  write the same variant of English language exam as an art student planning to read law? In other words, while it is not being suggested that these two subjects should be relegated, the contents can be tweaked and tailored to the specific needs of students without necessarily teaching the nitty gritty of the subjects to students who have no obvious use of them by reasons of their future career inclinations.

  It bears stressing that, yes, lapses on the part of WAEC may have partly occasioned the 2025 poor SSCE results which was initially announced, albeit now significantly improved after the suspicious review, but that should not be allowed to obfuscate the imperative of parents’ deliberate and intentional involvement in their children’s study and the need for a thorough official planning and seamless implementation of education policies. For instance, many of the public schools are in bad condition and without electricity,  which was why students had to write exams in darkness, in the first place. Again, there are no computers in most public schools, yet the Federal Government (FG) says WAEC exams will be fully computer-based (CBT-based) by 2026! This laudable official initiative/resolve, which is not yet backed by requisite infrastructure, promises to be a potential source of disappointment and national embarrassment if governments at the centre and subnational levels do not brace up and ensure that public schools are adequately resourced.

  The scenarios that played out with the 2025 SSCE results clearly put WAEC  in an unenviable position on all fronts: the avoidable subjection of students to examination under very difficult conditions reflects very badly on the examination body. Also, information about the alleged glitches which culminated in the release of poor results would not have been within the public domain if the results had been properly scrutinised and the identified lapses fixed before releasing the results. And the widespread perception that the review of the poor results, leading to new and enhanced grades for students, was arbitrary and that it was a smokescreen to pad the poor results,  detracts markedly from the esteem and integrity of the examiner. For WAEC, it is a catch-22 situation.

READ ALSO: UPDATED: Only 38.32% of candidates pass English, Maths as WAEC releases 2025 WASSCE results