The 2019 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) fully commenced yesterday, as more than 340,000 candidates sat for their first core subject, oral English.

The candidates comprising 170,867 males and 175,231 females began with their practical and theory papers on April 15.

As part of efforts to curb examination malpractices especially impersonation, the West African Examination Council (WAEC), introduced the biometric verification of students.

However, the Ghanaian Times observed that some examination centres had challenges with the verification machine.

In an interview with the Headmaster of St Martins Senior High School at Nsawam in the Eastern Region, Mr Theo-Thad Mor-Sarcoh, said the students were not verified because the gadget battery had run down.

At the Nsawam Senior High School, some 403 candidates sat for the Oral English Examination, and the Ghanaian Times observed that they had not yet been verified, although they had already began writing the exams.

The Headmistress of the school, Miss Anita Jackson, explained that her outfit had received the gadget in the morning together with the exams questions.

She said the gadget had a low battery, adding that it needed to be charged for 24 hours.

Evangel Kelvin Ainoo reports from the St Thomas Aquinas Senior High School (SHS) in Accra, that at least 580 final year students had been registered to sit for this year’s examination (WASSCE), according to Mr Emmanuel Dogodzi, Head of Guidance and Counseling Department.

He told Ghanaian Times that among the steps in preparing the students for the WASSCE examination were weekly seminars that were organised by the school authorities to coach the students on the format for answering the questions.

Mr Dogodzi said the school administration had expressed hope in the students excelling in the WASSCE examination following the performance in their mock and other internal assessments.

According to Mr Dogodzi, the students being their first to sit for the WASSCE examinations hesitated but due to guidance and counseling, some were able to gather courage and were prepared to write the exams.

David Vifa, a General Arts final year student of the school, said the teachers had built strong foundation in preparing them for the WASSCE.

He said students were introduced to some of the examination malpractices on WAEC and were advised not to fall victim to any.

“Our batch would perform better than last year’s even though they had A’s and the B’s but our performance this year will be superb and amaze the general public,” he assured.

The situation was not any different at Presbyterian Senior High School, Osu as candidates sat in batches to write their paper.

The WASSCE, which qualifies the candidates to tertiary institutions, is scheduled to end on June 7.