IMANI Africa’s Vice President, Kofi Bentil, is raising fresh concerns about the integrity of Ghana’s education system, describing examination malpractice as a widespread and coordinated problem involving school authorities. Speaking on Key Points on TV3 on Saturday, December 6, Bentil said cheating has moved beyond isolated incidents and is now embedded in school operations.
“Cheating has become systemic in many schools, organised. Teachers are part, headmasters are part, and invigilators are part. Schools are organising these things,” he stated, warning that the scale of collaboration threatens the credibility of national examinations.
As discussions around examination integrity intensify, the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) is also highlighting a related concern — the growing infiltration of pidgin and social media language in students’ WASSCE scripts. John Kapi, Head of Public Relations at WAEC, told Breakfast Daily on Channel One TV on Friday that the trend is already affecting performance in English.
“If you look at the English report that came out, for example, the Chief Examiner indicated that there was a lot of pidgin in what the candidates wrote. They also referred to what they called ‘social media language’ or jargons—things we normally use on WhatsApp which are not formal,” Kapi said.
He explained that many candidates struggled with basic writing standards, contributing to weaker outcomes in the English paper. “Especially in the English paper, some candidates could not use standard language, they could not spell properly, and they could not use the appropriate language to write their essays,” he noted.
Kapi stressed that resolving the issue requires a combined effort. “Addressing the issue requires action both at home and within the school system,” he added, urging teachers and parents to reinforce proper language use.
