By Amara Thoronka
West African Examination Council (WAEC), the public exams conducting body in West Africa, has shown unwillingness to corporate with the Government of Sierra Leone led by President Julius Maada Bio in providing free electronic access to the 2021 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results.
On Christmas Day [Saturday 25th December 2021] Sierra Leone’s Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, Dr. David Moinina Sengeh twitted:
“I did ask WAEC for the release of soft copies of the 2021 WASSCE results. They refused, claiming the data belongs to them and referred the matter to their Board which meets in January 2022. We have dispatched the hard copies to schools without analyses.”
Dr. Sengeh is a United States-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) trained expert with wide experience in information and communication technology, recognized globally.
It could be recalled that Dr. Sengeh and team, mid-2021, and for the first time in the history of Sierra Leone developed an electronic system that allowed for free, easy and quick access to results of this year’s National Primary School Examination (NPSE) – public exam for entrance to junior secondary school – and Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) – public exam for entrance to senior secondary school.
This year, 124,541 candidates took the NPSE and 131,822 sat to the BECE. All were given the opportunity by the Ministry to freely and quickly access their results at the comfort of their homes by sending a free text message to 468 and in a few seconds the results popped up.
Parents and pupils were profoundly appreciative and thanked President Bio and Dr. Sengeh for removing the financial burden of paying approximately One Hundred Thousand Leones ($10) to purchase a WAEC scratch card to access the result of just one pupil.
In a letter dated 22nd October 2021, addressed to Dr. Sengeh, WAEC expressed dismay over the Minister’s intention to extend the same free electronic access to candidates who took the 2021 WASSCE.
“At a meeting of the Sierra Leone Examinations Committee (SLEC) of WAEC held recently in Freetown it was reported that the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Examination (MBSSE) had created an online result checker platform and displayed for free access by candidates for the 2021 NPSE and BECE, despite the existence of a functional WAEC Result Checker facility. The council has viewed this development as most inappropriate and deeply worrisome…” the letter noted.
“In view of the adverse implications, I wish to solicit your kind intervention, Honourable Minister, to immediately shut down the MBSSE result checker platform to prevent the danger it portends and facilitate necessary consultation between WAEC and MBSSE on the issue,” it urged.
The scratch card system to access results online was introduced in Sierra Leone in August 2008. It has been 13 years of generating huge money from poor parents. The price of scratch card increases every year. The usual modus operandi is that WAEC will upload on their portal results for the said public exams and inform candidates to access their results online by purchasing a WAEC scratch card.
The results will be on the portal for weeks before they are sent to the schools. This is reportedly to influence curious parents to buy WAEC scratch cards to know the performance of their children before the results are sent to the schools.
As Sierra Leoneans observe the issue between WAEC and the Ministry, many hold the view that the move of WAEC is a way to continue making huge money from the sale of scratch cards as usual, notwithstanding the high poverty rate in the country.
