The Head of Public Affairs at the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), John Kapi, has disclosed that the council has received anonymous calls accusing some schools of taking money from students to help them cheat in examination.

Speaking on GTV on Tuesday, August 26, 2025, John Kapi expressed concern over the alarming number of malpractice cases recorded in the 2025 BECE, stating that some school authorities charge as little as GH¢5 per student to assist them during the examination.

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He attributed the rise in examination malpractices to financial motivation, adding that the council is yet to conduct its own research to better understand the root causes.

“We haven't done a scientific study into it [malpractices], but information we have received indicate that the basic motivation for this trend is monetary because a lot of anonymous people send information to us indicating centers where school authorities are charging certain amounts of money to provide assistance to the candidates at the examination halls,” he said.

“In some areas, we are told that they would charge a higher amount for a core paper and a lower amount for the elective papers. For BECE, I'm told, again, some of these things happen but we haven't had concrete evidence. Regardless, people send reports to us that as candidates walk in, they are supposed to pay a token of GH¢20, while some are paying GH¢10 per candidate. Others are taking as low as GH¢5 to assist them in the examination hall,” he added.

Kapi acknowledged that these reports are not yet backed by concrete evidence but added that, in such cases, the council increases monitoring in areas where malpractices are known to be prevalent.

“It is difficult to tell whether everybody is benefiting. But then, what I'm talking about is information that people give to us. These are anonymous people and, sometimes we increase our monitoring in those areas,” he said.

He recalled a past incident during a previous examination where a teacher was caught assisting candidates who had paid him for help.

He added that, as part of efforts to clamp down on such cases, several schools implicated in taking payments from candidates in exchange for assistance have been summoned by the Ghana Education Service (GES) and are currently under investigation.

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“There was one place where I think two years ago, we arrested a teacher who was going around the room finding out who had paid and who hadn't paid. So, quickly he was picked up and he had to answer questions. A number of schools have been summoned to the Ghana Education Service to answer questions on suspicion that they are collecting monies,” he stated.

His comments follow the release of the provisional results of the 2025 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), where the entire results of 177 of the 603,328 candidates who took the examination had been cancelled.

Additionally, the subject results of 718 candidates were cancelled due to examination malpractices.

MAG/VPO

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