WASSCE Starts Monday; Almost Two Million Students Involved

By Ayodele Oni

The West African Examinations Council has announced that this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination, (WASSCE) will begin on Monday with a total of 1,621,853 candidates from 20,851 secondary schools that have registered for the Examination.

Head of the Nigeria National Office, Mr Patrick Areghan, during a press briefing on Thursday, said the WASSCE will last till Friday, the 23rd of June, 2023 in Nigeria, spanning a period of seven weeks.

He added that candidates would be examined in 76 subjects, saying about 30,000 practicing senior secondary school teachers, nominated by the various State Ministries of Education, would be participating in the examination as supervisors.

“A total of 1,621,853 candidates from 20,851 secondary schools have registered for the examination. Out of this number, 798,810 are males, amounting to 49.25%, while 823,043 are females, which is 50.75% of the total candidature.

“The statistics show that there is a further increase and decrease in the number of females and males respectively, compared to the 2022 diet.

“On the whole, the candidature for the 2023 WASSCE (SC) increased by 13, 868 over the figure of 2022 1,607,985.”

Areghan added that schools that failed to upload the Continuous Assessment Score, (CASS) within the expected time frame after several free upload periods face possible penalties.

“CASS score is a major component in the computation of grades for candidates in the WASSCE (SC) examination. The use of technology has made it possible for the Council to provide platforms to enable schools to upload, manage and access students’ CASS data seamlessly and make such data available to schools on request.

“Currently, the Council allows upload of CASS data in SS1, SS2 and SS3, designated as CASS Year 1, CASS Year II, and CASS Year III at different upload periods.

“For each period of upload, the Council opens its portal free of charge for all schools and also extends the period of upload from time to time to enable all schools to upload.

“Schools that fail to upload within the expected time frame after several free upload periods face possible penalties. No school will have any result without complete CASS upload.

“The Council is facing a challenge in the implementation of the CASS policy due to the uncooperative attitude of some schools.”