The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has reviewed downwards the time question papers are supposed to get to the examination centres to ensure that question papers are not tampered with while in transit.
Instead of sending questions to examination centres two to three hours before the start of an examination as was done previously, question papers would now get to examination centres about 45 minutes before the commencement of each examination.
"In times past, we were sending question papers to them (examination officials) quite early, maybe two or three hours ahead of time. We have changed the arrangement so that it would be sent to the centres few minutes to time under lock and key so that people would not get access to them in transit," the Head of National Office of WAEC, Very Rev. Dr Samuel Nii Nmai Ollennu, told the Junior Graphic.
At the depots where question papers were kept securely locked, police officers as well as senior officers from both WAEC and the Ghana Education Service (GES), who kept the keys to the depot have to be present at the same time in the presence of the police before the bags containing the question papers are opened, he said.
Transporting the questions from the depot to the examination centres, he said, would be arranged by the GES.
"The GES comes with its personnel to the depots, and then the question papers are issued to them in locked security bags but they do not have the keys. The keys are with the supervisors at the centres. We have put this arrangement in place so that they do not have access to the questions in transit to ensure the questions get to the examination centres safely".
Very Rev. Dr Ollennu said the supervisors "are expected to count the question papers to ensure that they tally with what is on the waybill and serial numbers on the answer booklets would be recorded by the supervisors”.
Asked about the security around the printing houses, he said, he would not comment on that to ensure the sanctity of the examinations.
He said those who set the examination questions also did not know themselves because of security issues.
On the BECE, he said, the council expected the GES to handle the centre arrangements while the police provide personnel for escorting the questions from the depots to the examination centres and the answered scripts back to the depots after each paper is written.
