The Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education, Conrad Sackey, has announced that four secondary school heads will be suspended for six months without salaries for failing to meet the deadline set for the entry of Continuous Assessment Scores (CAS) for their candidates for the 2024/2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
Updating journalists, Minister Sackey said “we are fast approaching the public exams period and last year some pupils could not take the WASSCE due to difficulty they had in the registration processes”.
He disclosed that the government had to provide funds for them to take the private WASSCE and expressed hope that the Ministry would not be in the same situation this academic year.
According to the Minister, from his records, they still need some schools to register their candidates.
Explaining the system, he said that to take the WASSCE every school needs to upload the Continuous Assessment Scores of their candidates that constitute 30% of their grades, noting that the new system requires schools to annually upload the CAS. He added that they are only allowed to upgrade the current year’s CAS after completing the previous one.
“Whilst in the old system they were only required to upload CAS once for each entrant and were even allowed to upload it after the pupils had taken the written exams, it is no longer the case in this new system.”
He noted that that is the reason why they cannot have repeaters in the system. “A candidate who failed the previous WASSCE cannot have CAS for the two preceding years in the system which is a key requirement to qualify for each year’s WASSCE”.
The Minister said to ensure that only eligible candidates take this year’s exams, his Ministry has put stringent measures in place for schools to filter repeaters from the system.
He announced that for this year’s WASSCE, they have one hundred and sixty-three thousand seven hundred and ninety-seven (163,797) candidates in the system from Eight hundred and ninety-two (892) schools, compared to one hundred and forty-seven thousand 147000 from eight hundred and sixteen schools last year.
He commended school authorities who have been able to meet the deadline and said that all 892 schools have submitted CAS 1 for their candidates including their biodata, photograph and all other personal details while 880 schools have submitted CAS 2 which differs from the total number of schools in the system, meaning that 12 schools have defaulted.
“Among these, there are 4 private schools, 4 government/public schools and 4 schools that the ministry has no record of. “This does not mean that the candidates will not be taking the exams. It only means that their CAS has been reduced by 10%.”
The Minister described the action of the defaulting school authorities as gross indiscipline for which those in public schools will be facing consequences. He sent a strong warning to proprietors of private schools to ensure they get competent school heads if they do not want their licenses to be withdrawn.
He furthered that the next phase is the Batch Registration which requires every school to register their candidates to take this year’s WASSCE.
Minister Sackey encouraged parents and guardians to go to the schools of their children and wards and urge the school authorities to complete the process.
He informed that the deadline for the completion of the batch registration is 7th February 2025, saying presently only 32% of the 892 schools have done it so far. He said his Ministry is making frantic efforts to ensure that all the candidates take the public exams and has even gone further to provide support to school heads that need help.
“I am here to encourage school heads to do the needful so we won’t put our kids in the situation they found themselves in last year, “ he concluded.
