"FOR as low as N5000, students sitting for the on-going West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASCE) can procure a question paper, whatever the subject. The price varies from source of procurement to the bargaining power of the buyer."
Vanguard | AllAfrica

I really don't know what to say about this. Is it simply impossible to conduct an exam in Nigeria without widespread cheating? Is there a way to stop this from happening over and over again?

Of course its possible to stop it. Or at least bring those involve to book. If the price for an exam paper can be known then it is also possible to know who are paying it and who are collecting it. The problem with us is that it is those that were suppose to bring offenders to book that are usually the offenders.

well it is sad that examination malpractice in naija has become a permanent feature.and it is almost impossible to conduct any examination without some form of malpractice.infact many people take it as the norm, they feel people who don't want them to cheat are their enemie!

many students start planning for how they will outsmart the examiners immediately they register for an exam instead of reading.
all i can say is God help Nigeria!!!

This is a shame for the many hardworking nigerian's that play by the rules, in the end it just hurts to people cheating as there certificate will be worth nothing.

First examination leakage started with the UME, and gradually it became the norm of purchasing "special center' forms in which the answers to the examination questions were called out to the candidates while in the examination hall!!.

Now what I hear is that some Private secondary schools arrange with WAEC officials to ensure their students pass all papers after collecting exhorbitant WAEC fees from these students.

Basically many people are pushed to cheating when after several attempts on both WAEC and UME, they hardly meet the minimum requirements. And who wants to stay back when his/her mates are already in school and he/she can afford to pay for any special centre or form just to get through?

Prof. Bello Salim, the Registrar of JAMB, introduced a way of curbing this, but I am afraid, despite all efforts, there still are leakages!
It really is almost impossible to conduct exams without malpractices. It could be stoped but then it would take serious, and i mean serious work, on both parties - the students and the examiners.
These bodies should check their staff/invigilators, because it is when the staff have to info to give out, only then can students get access to these things, or how else would you give something you do not have?

This is not the first time there will be examination leakage, and this will not be the last time. This is a sad reflection of the corruption that has engulped the larger Nigerian society.

Until when our educational system is overhauled and we concentrate less on certificate or paper qualification, there will always be examination leakages.

What happened to the 6-3-3-4 educational system? Is it being implemented to the letter. By 6-3-3-4 system, by the time a student finished the Junior Secondary School (the first 3), he/she would have learnt a technical skill that can be put to economic use in case the student decided not to continue his/her education. Ditto for the Senior Secondary School (the second 3).

But it is not the case now, every student must get the WAEC certificate in order to have a relevant future. And WAEC is highly inefficient and saddled with over-corrupt officials. The future seems bleek except there is a divine intervention in this country.

It so painful that education in this country is no more important as it were. WAEC of today is like child's play and the students are not as serious minded, all they need is leakage(expo) for them to pass there WEAC.  All this is not the students fault but the irresponsible invigilators that are after there belly
We need external invigilators as in private bodies entirely  that have the fear of God in them not those ones that are after there belly.
I wish Nigerias will wake up and take up there responsibility concerning Education.

just out of curiousity what's involved in these tests (say even an example question) just so I can get an idea of what sort of things are being cheated on.

Hunter: Equivalent to your "O Levels", or the exam you take after finishing Secondary/High School.

Our exam's don't have a name but the peice of paper at the end is your VCE certificate, which is managed by our state (victoria in this case) new south wales and other states have there own certificate at the end but the curriculm is fairly similar across states.

What sort of say topic would some say find on a math's one?

For instance on ours it's about algebra so it's on linear equations, quadratic's, cubic's, calcus (sp?) etc

It's been a really long time since I saw a WASSCE question paper.

The examination body WAEC has started investigating the leakages,but my grouse is what happens to all exams conducted with the prior knowledge of the exam questions...its quite unfair if noting is done. I know it is a great economic loss to cancel the papers done, but i feel that is the best thing to be done!

If I had my way, exams as they are currently arranged would be scrapped.

Instead, I would give the students the questions well in advance, and even allow them to bring their textbooks into the exam hall so that they could give the best answer possible. After all, I'm not testing them on how well they can cram information but how well they can apply it.

Ka, you remind me of George Lucas; what you are suggesting is nothing but Science Fiction, because even forward-thinking countries (like the US?) are not doing such things.

You know what Nigerian students will do if you give them the questions well in advance? The dull ones will ask the smart ones to compose the answers for them, which they will proceed to write in their textbooks and transcribe during the course of the exam.

The students with the best handwriting will end up with the highest scores!

seun:

Ka, you remind me of George Lucas; what you are suggesting is nothing but Science Fiction, because even forward-thinking countries (like the US?) are not doing such things.

You know what Nigerian students will do if you give them the questions well in advance?  The dull ones will ask the smart ones to compose the answers for them, which they will proceed to write in their textbooks and transcribe during the course of the exam.

The students with the best handwriting will end up with the highest scores!

Oh, did I forget to mention that each student will be a 10 minute session during which they will be required to defend what they have written before examiners?

For an exam like WAEC's SSCE (WASSCE) which is taken by, say, a million students every year, this 10 minute session you're suggesting will take more than 6,900 man days.

To be completed in 30 days, such an exercise would require about 230 interviewers working round the clock with no breaks.

In our system if it's found the paper has been compromized they will just fail everyone at the school for that exam :/

seun:

For an exam like WAEC's SSCE (WASSCE) which is taken by, say, a million students every year, this 10 minute session you're suggesting will take more than 6,900 man days.

To be completed in 30 days, such an exercise would require about 230 interviewers working round the clock with no breaks.

So scrap exams altogether, and move the people who would have doing the marking onto doing the interviewing. Exam markers spend more than 10 minutes marking each paper, as it is.

Yes, but have you forgotten that it's these same people (WAEC employees) that are leaking exam papers to people who are willing to pay? If you scrap the exam, then the interviewer is free to award marks based on how much he likes your face (or how much you paid him prior to the interview!)

Well, Seun you are right because I don't think it'll grow wings and flow out of the safe. na dem dem ("it's the WAEC employees")

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Naija

gina34:
Well, Seun you are right because I don't think it'll grow wings and flow out of the safe. na dem dem ("it's the WAEC employees"

it's the officials... Trying to make quick fraudulent money