Activities of deceitful schools

The National Examinations Committee (NEC), the highest decision-making body of the West African Examination Council (WAEC) said more than 81,000 candidates were involved in examination malpractices during the 2011 May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE).
The NEC was appalled by the large number of cases and the involvement of schools, teachers and ministry officials in perpetrating examination malpractice, and announced during its meeting at the Excellence Hotel, Ogba last month that the guilty parties would be punished.


Schools will be blacklisted; candidates, in addition to having their results seized, will be barred for one or two years from retaking the examination; and officials will be stopped from participating in WAEC examinations and reported to their supervising authorities.
The NEC also mentioned the possibility of publishing the names of blacklisted candidates – like was done by WAEC Ghana recently, and I sincerely look forward to that happening.  I don’t know whether it will ever happen but if it does, it will be interesting to discover the names of schools and officials that will feature.


Will such a move check malpractice?  It should – except if our schools and officials have developed the thick skins some of our politicians have to shame (because we know in government circles, politicians who are exposed for stealing and other wrong doings somehow find their way back into positions of authority).  


As I said, I do hope that WAEC will publish the list, online, if not in the dailies, because I was shocked to my bones when I got inside information from a former pupil of one of the most popular elite private schools in Lagos State that they are taught during external examinations.  


Years back, I met a teacher at the school’s 20th anniversary.  He had just joined from another school, which I found named among the top 50 schools based on aggregates of 50 candidates in the WASSCE in 2006.  When I told him of the news, he scoffed at it, and said, “I know what they do”.  But he assured me that the elite private school in question condoned no such nonsense.  That was why when I learnt of the true happenings in that school, which has many branches in Lagos and prides itself for providing top class education at a cost that creates craters in parents’ bank accounts, I was truly mortified.  


The pupil, who I know to be naturally intelligent, told me that at during the last NECO Junior School Certificate Examination (JSCE) they wrote, many times, they got help from invigilators and supervisors.  The teenager spoke specifically of the Mathematics paper, how a man went from desk to desk giving them the objective answers.  The same thing happened for the Yoruba paper.  


The teenager also recounted a particular incident during the Technical Drawing paper where candidates had to produce drawings thus:  “When one boy was delaying after we had all finished, the invigilator asked who the best TD student in the class was.  We all pointed at another boy.  Immediately, she gave the second boy the slow coach’s paper to draw for him.  When he protested, saying, ‘But Ma, that is cheating’, the woman slapped him and forced him to do it.”


I stared, wide-eyed in surprise, with my mouth agape while listening to the pupil, who made good grades in the said examination.  Of course, the school was happy to boast about the results that did not allow its candidates to test their level of preparedness.  


If at that level, where the certificate does not count for so much, schools can go such lengths to cheat for their candidates, we can then imagine what happens at the SSCE level.  Unfortunately, institutionally-organised malpractice does not just happen at the SSCE level, but even during Cambridge O and A Level examinations written by these so-called big schools.  


Unfortunately, parents support these activities.  They patronise such dubious schools and pay teachers to cheat on their wards’ behalf.  But they do their children no good because they do not actually learn what they ought to.  It is also a disincentive for hard work and innovation.  When pupils know they can be taught during examinations, they lose interest in studying.


So, parents should be wary when schools boast of the exploits of their pupils in examinations.  It is simply not enough.  Good schools should normally record good performance in examinations.  But parents should also be interested in how pupils of such schools perform in competitions, where it is more difficult to cheat.  They should consider the quality of the competition, its organisers, the calibre of schools involved, and their performance.  That way, they can get a fair idea of how grounded the school is.
by Kofoworola Belo-Osagie(The Nation)


or what do you think about it? make your suggestions  by typing your comments