Results of 26,434 candidates who sat for this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) have been withheld over various cases of examination malpractices.

The West African Examination Council (WAEC) explained the results of the affected candidates would be cancelled if its on-going investigation finds them culpable.

“The withheld results of candidates will be cancelled if found culpable, or released if otherwise,” a statement announcing the release of provisional results of the examination said.

The alleged malpractices, WAEC noted, were “detected during and after” the conduct of the examination which was written by 316,999 SHS students across the country.

Figures from WAEC showed a marked improvement in Social Studies as candidates who scored between A1-C6 improved from last year’s 52.25 per cent to 73.27 per cent.

Integrated Science also recorded a slight improvement with 50.52 candidates scoring between A1 and C6. In 2017, 43.66 per cent of the candidates scored that grade.

However, Core Mathematics recorded a drop in performance this year with 38.33 per cent of the candidates scoring grade A1 to C6 as against last year’s performance of 42.73 per cent.

Similarly, there was a drop in the performance in English Language with 46.79 per cent of the candidates scoring A1-C6 as against last year’s 54.06 per cent.

Candidates wishing to know how they performed can access the provisional results from WAEC’s website.

“The Council will despatch the results to the schools and candidates are advised to contact their heads of school for their results,” the statement said.

It has meanwhile cautioned candidates to be wary of impostors, who promise to change examination results for a fee, noting, “all WAEC results are well secured and can be authenticated”.

It said those who will forge their results will be exposed.

Statistics

A total of 316,999 candidates entered for the examination. This figure is 9.6% higher than the 2017 candidature of 289,207.

The 2018 entry figure was made up of 158,550 (50.02%) males and 158,449 (49.98%) females.

The examination was conducted for 946 participating schools. A total of 1,378 (0.43%) of the candidates who registered were absent from the examination.

The Performance of the candidates in regard to the four core subjects are as follows:

English Language147,232 (46.79%) obtained Al-C6; 99,402(31.60%) obtained D7-E8while 68,002(21.61%) had F9;

Mathematics (core):120,519 (38.33%) obtained A1-C6;94,607(30.09%) obtained D7-E8while 99,275(31.58%) had F9;

Integrated Science: 158,691 (50.52%) obtained A1-C6; 109,069(34.72%) obtained D7-68whilst 46,367(14.76%) had F9;

Social Studies:230,141(73.27%) obtained A1-C6; 46,464(14.79%) obtained D7-E8 whilst 37,494 (11.94%) had F9.