West African Exams Council WASCCE
Chief Examiners Reports
We present recently obtained West
African Examinations Council chief
examiners' reports for Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Gambia for the
WASSCE exam for 2006. Although these results are now almost ten years
old they should still serve as a useful reference point for evaluating
the educational progress of the countries in the years since 2006. WAEC
is notoriously tight-lipped, not to say secretive, in its release of
statistical information, especially relating to relative performance
among the five participating countries (Liberia being the fifth), so
these reports provide a valuable addition to our understanding of the
situation. They confirm the conclusions reached in our
last assessment of relative performance, Dysfunctional Education: there
is a very large gap between the educational outcomes of Nigeria and
Ghana on the one hand and that of Sierra Leone on the other. In some
subjects (English Language, Mathematics) Gambia's pass rate is
comparable to Sierra Leone's, but in the science subjects it appears to
do better in these reports.