The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) on Friday gave this year's Basic Education Certificate of Examinations (BECE) the thumbs-up saying they were clean.

Mrs Agnes Teye-Cudjoe, Senior Public Affairs Officer of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) told the Ghana News Agency that there had been no reported cases of leakage of questions or malpractice.

The examinations, which started on Monday, ended on Friday.

She attributed the smooth running of the examinations to the beefing up in the security arrangement, an in-house cleaning at WAEC and other security measures to prevent a recurrence of last year's leakage, which forced the authorities to cancel the papers and order a re-write.

Mrs Teye-Cudjoe said students and the public comported themselves this year as compared to last year, where there were cases of indiscipline on the part of some students.

"Though there had been a few reported cases of absenteeism in some centres nationwide, with varied reasons, the situation seems not to be bad," she said.

Mrs Teye-Cudjoe congratulated the media for their support in ensuring that there was enough education and warning to members of the public, who might have contemplated smuggling examination questions to candidates.

She said though WAEC had always ensured that there were enough security measures to prevent the leakage of examination questions, co-operation between its workers and those called in to perform some functions had not been enough to ensure this.

In all 268,284 candidates, including 121,322 girls, were expected to have written eight to nine subjects. Last year, 267,956 candidates took the examinations.

Candidates from 7,105 schools were to write the examination at 998 centres.

The Upper East and Upper West Regions had 7,577 and 5,064 candidates, respectively, while the Northern Region had 13,403 candidates.

The Greater Accra had 53,183 candidates, Eastern Region, 33,055, Central Region, 27,582 and Western Region, 26,063.

The rest were Ashanti, 54,537, Brong Ahafo registered 23,727 and Volta, 24,093 candidates.

The Reverend John A. Adotey, Acting Head of National Office, WAEC, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) before the beginning of the examinations that they had put in place a lot of security measures to ensure that the unfortunate incident with the 2002 BECE did not recur.

He warned candidates and the public to be wary of individuals, who might claim to have examination question papers in their possession and urged the public to report such persons to the Council immediately.