THE West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the Ministry of Education have denied reports of alleged leakage of examination questions of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), which ends today.

The two organisations have, however, indicated that separate investigations have begun into claims by a section of the media that some examination questions have been leaked.

Speaking to the Graphic during separate interviews in Accra yesterday, both the Minister of Education, Professor Christopher Ameyaw-Akumfi and Mrs Lydia Kpodo, the Head of the National Office of WAEC, gave the assurance that the allegations would be thoroughly investigated to establish the truth or otherwise of the claims.

Mrs Kpodo described the claims as baseless and said although WAEC does not rule out the possibility of a leakage, there is no evidence, so far, that some of the papers have leaked.

This notwithstanding, she said, officials of WAEC, in collaboration with the police, are investigating the reports.

She referred to a Joy FM radio report which said that the Pre-Technical Skills, Agricultural Science and General Science question papers had leaked, and said the question papers which were purported to have leaked and are in circulation, bear different questions from the genuine WAEC question papers.

Mrs Kpodo expressed surprise at the Joy FM report, saying the reporter of the station had called at the WAEC office on Tuesday, and was shown copies of the genuine WAEC question papers, which were different from what he brought from outside as leaked papers. She said that there are more than 900 BECE centres in the country, and, so far, none of the reports from the WAEC monitoring teams has indicated that some candidates had prior knowledge of the examination questions.

The WAEC Tests Administrator, Rev John Adotey, said there is the likelihood that some unscrupulous individuals are printing their own question papers which they are circulating as WAEC question papers, for illicit gains.

Asked where the WAEC question papers were printed, Rev Adotey said, it will not be appropriate to disclose that now.

“We usually do not disclose that, but if it becomes necessary to give out the name of the printing press as part of investigations into the matter, we will do so”, he added.

On his part, Professor Ameyaw-Akumfi, said “we are going to pursue this matter vigorously to apprehend and prosecute all those behind the circulation of those fictitious examination papers”.

He said so far, there is no similarity, whatsoever, between the official papers and the ones in circulation. Professor Ameyaw-Akumfi, stated that the examinations will continue and if after the examinations, there is ample evidence of any leakage, the particular paper which leaked would be cancelled. He said, the sources of the information of the alleged leakage will be asked to assist in the investigations because the ministry and WAEC have a responsibility to ensure that people have confidence in all the examinations conducted in the country.

Professor Ameyaw-Akumfi said there are sanctions for heads of schools, examination centres and printers of the papers found to have misconducted themselves during the examinations.

“This has happened before and some centres were banned and we will not hesitate to do so this time if we have the proof.

He said measures have been put in place to ensure that no student cheats in the examinations. Professor Ameyaw-Akumfi said, as regards the security of the papers, WAEC has the mechanism of ensuring that such leakages do not occur. “This is the more reason why the ministry is concerned about the speculations,” he emphasised.

He said much as the ministry does not rule out the possibility of any leakage, there is the need to be cautious about the way the news is handled The minister said there is the need to also realise that people can deliberately do this to make money from unsuspecting parents and students and called on the media to be circumspect in their handling of such unsubstantiated allegations.

Professor Ameyaw-Akumfi, therefore, called for calm and also appealed to the public to co-operate with the authorities to get to the root of the matter.

In a related development, Michael Donkor reports that, a pupil of the Maamobi Prisons Junior Secondary School in Accra has been apprehended by the police for attempting to cheat in the examination.

The student whose name was not given for security reasons was found in possession of foreign materials. He has, however, been asked to write a statement while he continues with his papers.

Speaking in an interview, the Assistant Headmistress of Accra Girls Secondary School, Ms. Veronica Akapame whose school serves as the examination centre, said shortly after the first paper started, the student was seen with some foreign materials under his examination papers.

She said she immediately drew the attention of the West African Examination Council (WAEC) representative who retrieved the papers.

In Cape Coast, with the exception of the Adisadel College Examination Centre where a candidate was caught with foreign material during the Religious and Moral Education paper on Monday, the BECE has not recorded any major incident, reports Janet Quainoo. Supervisors of the three of the six centres the Graphic visited mentioned absenteeism as the main problem. The decision by the WAEC to delay the release of the two papers for the day yesterday morning caused some delays of between five and ten minutes at some of the centres.

In Tamale, there has not been any reported case of examination malpractice or leakage in the municipality reports Zakaria Alhassan.

According to the Assistant Controller of the WAEC in Tamale, Mr Abiro Lawrence, “the region is not part of the leakage issue”.

At all the centres visited in the Tamale Municipality the supervisors described the conduct of the students as satisfactory.

At the Kalpohini S.S.S, the supervisor, Mr Apatika Albert, said his outfit has not received any report of a leakage.