The Ghana Education Service (GES) has described as “unfortunate” attempt by Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, the former education minister to attribute the excellent ‘Free SHS’ WASSCE results to leaked papers.

Prof Opoku-Agyemang in an interview with Woezor TV questioned why Ghanaians are celebrating the outstanding performance of the SHS students in the 2020 WASCCE exams.

“We have also heard and seen students who wrote an exams, came out and it was like, you know we had an earthquake in this country, it wasn’t like one school or two schools … this same group performance is supposed to be outstanding that we shouldn’t be talking, it is the group I am referring to,” she said.

She added: “And they went and wrote the exams we heard of the leakage of the exams, we heard of invigilators being compromised, we heard many many things and we also saw the students come out and speak about, ‘no this is not what we were told will happen’, now these students have as and we are happy? It is up to us.”

Speaking to Nana Yaa Mensah on The Asaase Breakfast Show on Tuesday 1 June, Dr Kwabena Tandoh, the deputy director-general of the GES, said Prof Opoku-Agyemang’s comments are worrying.

“If there were leaks, the reactions that Prof Opoku-Agyemang called an earthquake in terms of the students’ displeasure with the way the exams went, it wouldn’t have made sense, because anybody who had leaks of exams questions obviously cannot come out and be angry and destroy property.”

“For GES, it was quite shocking to hear that because we had students from Holy Child, Achimota, Wesley Girls, Archbishop Porter all these young boys and girls somehow to suggest that there was a coordinated effort among GES, schools, children to leak exams papers to all these children, it questions the integrity of everybody so we are wholly disappointed in the unfortunate statement of the former education minister,” he said.

Background

At least 411 out of the 465 candidates who scored 8As in the 2020 WASSCE were students from Ghana, and beneficiaries of the Free SHS policy.

Again, 2020 was the only year that 50% of Ghanaian students scored A1 to C6 in all core subjects, official records at WAEC said.