2023 WASSCE examiners lament over unpaid allowance

Examiners who took part in marking the 2023 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) papers have expressed discontent with the government for despising their efforts in contributing to the timely release of the results.

The examiners are left groping in the dark for information from authorities regarding when their service in making the results released will be paid for.

The West African Examination Council (WAEC) on December 18, 2023, announced the release of the results which were also available online for candidates to access and also recorded that the 2023 result is the best in the last four years from 2020 to 2023, per the performance statistics released by WAEC.

The government upon the release of the statistics by WAEC has hailed the 2023 WASSCE results and tagged critics of free Senior High School as antagonists of the free SHS policy.

However, the government has failed to pay the allowance for the examiners since last year November.

Speaking to some coordinators, team leaders, and assistant examiners, they asserted that the government lured them with the payment of BECE allowance which was also delayed.

They mentioned that the government strategically paid the allowance for marking the BECE during the coordinating period for the WASSCE to lure the examiners into marking the WASSCE exam scripts.

“After we spent days and nights marking the scripts to meet the deadline given by WAEC, the government is still owing us our allowances which has never been the case in the past years”.

“Usually after two weeks of submitting our marked scripts, vouchers are provided to us to take to the bank for our accounts to be credited. We often pick vouchers before results are released meaning we are normally paid before WAEC releases the results”, they said.

“We are informed that the government does not have the money to pay us and no assurance of when we will be paid. A lot of pensioners and retirees in the teaching field have taken part in the marking to sustain themselves financially and the delay will affect them. We can say that the government has taken teachers for granted because we cannot demonstrate”, the teachers lamented.

The examiners stated that the delay in the payment of the allowance will affect WAEC as they will lose a number of experienced examiners.

“WAEC will lose most experienced examiners emanating from the government’s inability to pay WAEC students’ registration fees to enable WAEC to pay its examiners on time”, they said.

A total number of 448,674 candidates made up of 212,453 males and 236,221 females from 975 schools entered the examination. This figure is 5.8% higher than the 2022 entry figure of 422,883. A total number of 3,404 (0.75%) were absent from the examination.