In Western Germany, the floods ran amok in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler destroying buildings, property and taking away lives with it. In China, at least 155 were reported missing. In the Henan province, 12 died from floods in railway tunnels. Many were injured and others went missing with incredible destruction of properties.

Then in the western Indian state of Maharashtra, 110 people were killed in landslides and flooding triggered by heavy rains. The Indians were accorded the same fate, with floods killing people and leaving many homeless. In the United States, over 2.6 million acres have burned this year due to wildfires. That’s over 800,000 acres more than this time last year. 

Experts have blamed these natural disasters partly on climate change. Wikipedia defines climate change as “both global warming driven by human-induced emissions of green house gases and the resulting large-scale shifts in weather patterns.” 

The most important phrase here is “driven by human-induced emissions“. But it’s interesting to note that it was only in 1899 that Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin developed at length the idea that changes in climate could result from changes in the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The cumulative effect of years of negligence of humanity is now having its toll on the world. 

As I watched these troubling pictures roll on the television, my attention was swiftly drawn to my country, Ghana. And as a teacher, it quickly dawned on me – won’t years of tampering with students’ exam in Ghana lead to a tsunami in the education system and human resource development potential?

I shivered as this thought fizzled through my mind. Won’t our negligence to behave as teachers entrusted to teach and supervise students to write credible examination have a catastrophic effect on the human resource of our nation? I just couldn’t believe how this fact had eluded 99.9% of teachers and educationists yet it stared at me in the face.

I paused to reflect. Imagine a hypothetical student at the primary school in one of the districts. This child, a truant and rapscallion hardly goes to school. He can’t be spanked because GES has outlawed it. He can’t be repeated either. He goes to school when he sees fit. Then eventually he gets to the JHS and as required of him, he’s to sit for the BECE. Then quickly, the unprofessional and irresponsible teacher introduces the student to corruption.

He takes just 10 cedis from each student, organizes them and as hard as one would believe it, writes the examination for the student. He passes. GES is happy, not interested in how he passed. Never even bothered to send inspectors to exam centers. And even if they did, these inspectors would usually cast blind eye to any malpractice they witnessed. 

Because, the fact is, GES is the child of ministry of education and the ministry of education is the child of dirty, propagandistic, Ghanaian politics. Government can’t be blamed for poor academic performance of JHS or SHS students. No! That will make the NDC or NPP government unpopular. And so malpractice like its parent – corruption, is legalized in the minds of students and teachers. Such a short-sighted nation! So what happens next?

This student is automatically admitted into the SHS, thanks to the poorly implemented free SHS which has no cut-off or whatsoever. As one would expect, he continues his truancy at the SHS and once again, protected by misguided GES rules – he can’t be whipped, repeated or even scolded. He gets to the final year and gets registered for the WASSCE. 

Then here comes the unscrupulous teacher again with his pocket widely opened to further corrupt the child. This time, he takes 100 cedis or more from each child and once again, under the pretext of invigilating the exam for WAEC, he writes the examination for the candidate. The train of thoughts was frightening to me. 

What kind of training has such a child gained? Is it the certificate or the training? Is it the number of A1’s or the ability to develop logical reasoning? With all the 8A’s, how many Ghanaians have been able to independently pursue or apply academic training in the field of Science and technology?

Because while the US child preparing for SAT thinks about creating the next big App or website or company, the Ghanaian child whose exam is being written for him by corrupt teachers in the bush thinks about how to further pay his way into the police, military or any of the security agency. What a country!

So is it surprising that the policewoman cannot write the statement of the complainant, or can hardly write a sentence without a grammatical error? Just imagine if a District Chief Executive (DCE) or Member of Parliament (MP) went through this system! Aren’t you sweating? If you aren’t, then you have no emotions and love for mother Ghana.

Just pause and reflect on the thought of handing over AK 47 to a young man who never spent time in the classroom to familiarize himself with how discipline is like, how to add and subtract numbers, how to recognize terms alike and not alike, and how to even elevate his imaginary thinking abilities to perceive the idea of bonding among atoms? 

A young man who has never thought independently to find a solution to basic arithmetic in the BECE or WASSCE before is given AK 47 and sent into the midst of wild demonstrators in Ejura to find a way or solution to curb it. Are you kidding me? The outcome is obvious. The climate is fast changing and sadly, no one is pointing to the CO2 emissions in the education sector. Time, only time will tell.  

Examination malpractice is the new norm of conducting examinations in Ghana. In the past, it was only the student who struggled alone in this respect. But today, the food chain has taken a drastic turn. Many less suspected organisms have found their way into the food web. If you think of the fact that these kids will be the leaders in the next one, two or more decades, you’ll faint if you are a nationalist and genuinely wants to see your country become a developed nation. According to Abraham Lincoln,

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

The examination malpractice starts with irresponsible exam officers who are willing to sell questions for a penny. Then you have an exam body (WAEC) that will defend itself and employees at all odds. When even the Core Mathematics questions were freely roaming on Facebook and social media in 2020, the body released a statement to debunk it, lying straight through their teeth. 

Then you have uninformed Ghanaian bloggers waiting anxiously to hop onto leaked questions and post them on blogs, Facebook etc. What a great disservice to the nation! 

There are also rogue websites and Whatsapp groups that also claim to sell WASSCE questions for as low as 300 cedis. Why should a test to train the human resource of a country become business for a citizen? I have personally joined some of these groups just to have a feel of what transpires there. The administrator typically bans everyone to post a message on the platform using Whatsapp’s “only admins can post” feature. He then continually posts in reports or tit-bits about the ongoing examination, sporadically sharing some questions for free with the promise that early one-on-one sign ups will receive more. 

And you’ll see misguided parents frenzily hunting for leaked questions for their wards. Charming! Isn’t it? You see how everyone is contributing to the Co2 build-up?

And after all these, the last and most dangerous contributor to the emissions is the classroom teacher, who ironically has been entrusted with the responsibility to invigilate the exam. The buck stops on him. The invigilator can serve as a major stumbling block to malpractice in the exam hall. Leaked questions are sometimes changed or untrue but what lies before the student is the real deal. That’s where the nation builder, the teacher, stoops so low and corrupts the young boy or girl. 

In Ghana now, let me make it unapologetically clear that students don’t write examination anymore. It’s the teachers who write it for them. Maybe it’s high time the West African Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) was changed to West African Senior Secondary School Teachers Assisted Certificate Examination (WASSTACE). That would be a befitting name than its current misleading name.

It might look harmless and plausible to hear that GES has mandated headmasters to produce good WASSCE grades under a certain performance contract. After all, can’t your employer demand better results? Yes, they can but at what cost without proper checks?

If you begin to realize that headmasters don’t write exam but students,  and students have been given unnecessary and counterproductive freedoms such that they hardly go to school let alone learn nowadays, and the fact that GES has no interest in how students pass, you’ll realize how this seemingly harmless rule is creating empty-headed A1 students.

I have asked myself several times if exam malpractice is worth it? Are the students who write the exam not Ghanaians? Then why are we so hard on them? Won’t being so hard on them destroy their future?

Well, if you’re a teacher and this is your train of thoughts, you’re not alone. I used to think shabbily like this. What do you do as a parent if your child cries for the knife? Do you give to him because he would cry or you don’t because he could end up hurting himself?

Many teachers still don’t know that the students are the human resource of the nation and that their training is all that matters, not the 8A’s they can’t defend.

The battle is not Presbyterian Boys SHS against Prempeh or Wesley Girls SHS against St. Louis SHS. The real battle is Ghana against the world.

Think about it. While we deceive ourselves that our students are good yet we write their exam for them, the Americans, Japanese, Chinese, Europeans are training their kids to think independently to solve problems themselves. While we bestow undeserved grades on them for a penny, those foreign kids are cracking it themselves.

In China today, do you know that examination malpractice can send a student to 7 years in prison? Yes, a student – not a teacher or a fully grown man selling examination questions online. Think about this. Is it surprising that China is the second biggest economy and that her growth in the few decades has been unprecedented?

In the next decades, they will become prime ministers, senators, ministers, etc of their respective countries and we’ll have half-baked human resource to make laws in parliament, man major ministries etc.

If you consider this scary atmosphere, you’ll now understand that it’s not coincidence that we’re underdeveloped and witnessing the unspeakable peak of incompetence on both sides of the two major political parties in the country. Because real life is not given to you on a silver platter. Oh no! You have to work tirelessly on your own applying critical thinking similar to analyzing an algebraic or arithmetic expression.

And if your education was marred in corruption, you have no moral scruples and sense of loyalty to even take good care of your natural resource. A corrupted human resource taking care of natural resource! Interesting, isn’t it?

Allow me to walk you down the aisle of basic biological science to embrace the specter of awe that faces you squarely.

In Biology, there’s something called the “levels of orgainization of living organisms.” That is, Cell>Tissue>Organ>System>Organism.

The cell is the basic unit structure. Examples of cells include the white blood cell, red blood cell, nerve cell etc. Two or more cells work together to form a tissue. Examples of tissues are the muscle tissue, nerve tissue, connective tissue, epithelial tissue etc.

Two or more tissues work together to form an organ. Examples of organs include the heart, gall bladder, kidney etc. And in that order, two or more organs function together to form a System. Examples include the digestive, circulatory and respirator systems. These systems function together to form the living organism.

The cell is the basic unit of structure. This can be likened to our basic education. The Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) student is the cell of this nation.

If the cell (Basic Education) is properly administered without any malpractice in the BECE, the cell remains healthy to join other healthy cells to form a tissue. 

The tissue is the secondary or senior high education. If the student is forced to study hard to obatin a certain cut-off before admitted into the school and program of his choice, it helps him/her to stay competitive. If he is punished when truant and indisciplned, it strengthens the health of the tissues. If he is repeated if he/she fails to write semester examination or make the required mark for promotion to next level, he is taught the quality of hardwork and perseverance. 

And most important of all, if the Ministry of Education, Ghana Eduction Service and West African Examination Council (WAEC) become smart enough to enact strict measures to discourage him from participating in examination malpractice, he is forced to study hard and ensure his passes independently. This strengthens the health of the tissues and make them ready to create healthy organs. 

The tissues become more strengthened if the misguided classroom teacher refrains from denying the child his/her ability to reason independently to write his/her WASSCE examination. He is robbed of the ability to apply his congnitive abilities if the corrupt supervisor, invigilator and puppet headmaster join forces to take money from him/her and wirte his examination for him. 

The well formed and properly functioning tissues function together to form a healthy organ. This is the tertiary education. The student at this point is ripe for further education. He has been given the opportunity to reason for himself on paper from the basic up to this point without the filthy touch of the corrupt classroom teacher and pro-malpractice dictates by the ministry of education and GES. Here, the student still looks up to hardworking lecturers who won’t patronize sex for grades or extort exorbitant money for insignificant photocopied, so-called handouts.  

With all organs functioning properly, the student is ready for the next stage in his cycle. He completes the tertiary education and thanks to proper government polices, he expects to be absorbed swiftly into the workforce. This is the system. the workplace is the system of the nation. Having being trained properly without introduction to corruption in school, the hardworking student who has worked it through tirelessly himself will hardly want to look out for short, easy and corrupt ways or means to make money. This bodes well for the nation.

At the stage, the systems are functioning properly and they function together to form an organism. The organism is the nation, our beloved Ghana. So, it is evident that corruption does not just become part of a person. It is something learnt by the Ghanaian in the course of his education. And examination malpractice can be traced back as one of the root cause of corruption in the country. Sadly, nobody cares. 

In the food web, the truant or lazy student depends on a couple of people to engage in examination malpractice. He depends on his misinformed parents, ‘apor‘ dealers, subject teachers, corrupt invigilators and even unpatriotic partisan politicians. The corrupt supervisor survives because of the complicity of the corrupt WAEC depot keeper, puppet headmasters etc.

We also have political GES living off the bad and propaganda educational policies of the ministry of education. Corrupt depot keepers, supervisors, and invigilators also depend of the mercy of the corrupt police officer sent to the examination center. The chain of dependence is complex and hard to even monitor and control. 

Every teacher has a reason for indulging in exam malpractice. For the most part, it’s to supplement his meagre salary. Many teachers may probably think twice before joining the bandwagon if they were given decent and humane salaries. The arithmetic is scary and definitely overwhelming to the poorly remunerated teacher.

Assume a school of a 1000 population is extorting 300 cedis from each student. That puts the sum at a staggering 300,000 cedis (3 billion). Most teachers have only heard or seen such amount written on the whiteboard. If such an amount is shared among a population of 200 teachers and administrative workers, each bags home 1,500 cedis in just one month.

To the teacher, that doubles his salary for that month. So why shouldn’t he do it especially when misguided GES is on the tail of headmasters to conjure grades for students? It appears GES and the ministry of education deliberately starve teachers to encourage them to indulge in this God-forsaken and anti-national practice. Candidates pay a non-refundable amount of money to teachers to assist them in both BECE and WASSCE examinations each year.

This is not an allegation. This is an open fact. Given the fact that some members of GES have their wards in Ghanaian schools, they’re very well in the known. This money is usually funneled through the students’ leadership to a centralized super corrupt representative of the teachers in that school. The propaganda machinery of government also gets the bragging right of clutching more “teacher-made” A1’s.

The headmasters, accounts clerks and administrative leadership of those schools normally lie low and pull strings from afar. This shadow agency maintains deep interest in both the financial and fake academic performance of the students. Whereas their schools are crowned district or regional or national champions, they still manage to stash away some cedis for their mundane indulgence. It’s a win-win situation for both misguided GES and their puppet Headmasters. 

Both parties don’t care about the irreparable damage their irresponsible attitude could have on the nation. After all, Ghanaian politicians have never been long-sighted in their plans and decisions since the death of Nkrumah. If it gives them a 4 year term, so be it. Outrageous!

To some teachers, it’s not so much because of the money but to satisfy their inflated ego that students had more A1’s in their subject. It’s funny and equally sad to see subject teachers busily answering questions for students just to save their face. Why should it be so? It’s high time GES planted remote CCTV cameras in shortlisted classrooms in every school just to familiarize themselves with the greater length teachers go to teach, digest and explain basic principles to students yet because of their (GES) shallow and misguided rules, students have grown stubborn, undisciplined and indifferent to academic work.

The school teacher who frowns on malpractice becomes sworn enemy of most students, corrupt colleague teachers and pro-malpractice headmasters. They are frequently summoned for questioning if they miss a second of their period. They’re given queries for the slightest misdemeanor and impulsively sanctioned for the least step out of place. The tactic, commonly employed by partisan governments, is to frustrate and silent free-minded and pro-nationalist teachers who genuinely want to build a better human resource for the nation.

My greatest fear has always come from the computer science adage that, “Garbage in, Garbage out”. The threat of incompetent A1 students gloriously sailing into our medical schools, nursing or engineering colleges threatens my peace and security. As the world becomes more dangerous with the advent of incurable diseases and pandemics, we Ghanaians are pushing fake students with fake grades into the health and technological sector and trusting our fast deteriorating health to these developmental shenanigans.

In 2020, government was desperate to prove critics wrong that free SHS was not efficient.
Of course, it’s. Free SHS is the best thing that has happened to mother Ghana. With our resources as a nation, this policy should have been implemented long time but for the corrupt and selfish politicians of the motherland, it was never an option. The problem is, however, its implementation. The fact that:

• students are not pressured to have a cutoff before admission robs the education sector of its competitiveness .
• corporal punishment is abolished sends a pleasing message to students that their greatest foe is incarcerated. It’s like taking away the AK-47 from the soldier and sending him into the midst of rebels or Mujahideen Jihadists. He won’t survive a second.t
• pregnant girls are glorified, given residence at boarding houses and offered balance diet serves a bad precedent for other students and it insults our culture and moral values right in the face.

Examinaton malpractice must be stopped. The ministry of education must understand that corrupting the human resource to gain political points is a great disservice to the nation. GES must stop chasing school authorities to conjure grades and implement proper disciplinary measures to snuff out the unnecessary pampering given to the Ghanaian school child today.

Headmasters must come together and be bold to say no to GES if they are pressured to ensure good grades by any means necessary. The subject teacher must stand his grounds and say no to examination malpractice. It is not worth taking scanty amounts from students and writing their examinations for them.

To WAEC, I  say, enough talk. Walk the talk and keep our academic space healthy else the country must find a responsible examination body.