No compromise for BECE exam leakage culprits - Education Minister

Education Minister Prof Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang is vowing ‘no compromise’ for any guilty party in the latest WAEC examination paper leakages that has seen as many as five 2015 BECE exam papers canceled.

The West African Examinations Council on Wednesday announced the cancellation of the papers in the ongoing Basic Education Certificate Examination on grounds the papers had been compromised.

• The papers are:
  English Language 2;
  Religious and Moral Education 2;
  Integrated Science 2;
  Mathematics 2;
  Social Studies 2

Painful decision
The Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) is out for those involved in leaking the papers, and the unhappy Prof Opoku Agyemang says the bizarre recurrence must stop. She told Radio Gold that the decision to cancel the papers, though painful, was the most appropriate.

She said there were questions of whether to cancel only a few of the papers but after further observation, it was realized all manner of questions had gone viral, saying the issue is not about making people happy but about the future of the children. And once it had gone viral and not limited to a locality, a nationwide cancelation was the obvious.

Asked why she was unhappy at the leakage since it has become an annual ritual, she said it was precisely her pain that it keeps recurring.

“I wasn’t happy because it’s a recurring problem, I wasn’t happy, in fact the reason that made me most unhappy was that it’s about children, you see, it’s about our youngest candidates. And so that made me very, very unhappy, that’s the very first time for them, some may be afraid, some may be nervous, we do everything to calm them down and to ensure that they can focus on the exam, so this is not the sort of thing that you expect to happen. But once it has happened on this scale, you have to take the action regardless about how we are all feeling, it’s not about emotions.”

Punish culprits
“All I’m hoping is that when everything is said and done, that there is no parent involved, that there is no invigilator involved, that there is no teacher involved, that there is no child involved. That there is no adult that we all look up to for responsible behaviour involved. If they are we take the action as may have been recommended by the committee. We will not compromise at all.”

She said the fact that past investigations into leakages had not yielded much should not stop the search for better solutions to make the crime less easy and to protect the integrity of the examinations, saying criminals usually seek to be ahead of systems but cannot be allowed to have their way.

Parents should comfort candidates
“At this time I’m sure they are unhappy, and they would be unhappy because they expected that by tomorrow it would be over and you know how they celebrate and all that so the sense of disappointment is there. We want the parents to talk to them, comfort them but let them also understand that it’s better, what we are doing is painful, we know, but we think it’s better to administer this for better results than just to condone what is going on…”.