WAEC Goes 'HITECH' : Students To Write WASSCE Via Internet

Plans are underway for prospective candidates for the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE) to write the examination via the internet. The project will be under a new programme known as the Internet-Based Test (IBT), an online test that requires candidates to provide answers to questions on respective papers through the internet without being provided with the hard copies of examination papers. The head of Test Administration Division at the West African Examination Council (WAEC), Mr Felix Akuffo-Badoo, who disclosed this in an interview with The Ghanaian Times in Accra, on Friday said the initiative was part of efforts to upgrade the examination in the country, while checking examination malpractices. He said the IBT had a well structured form of questions that would make it very difficult for candidates to copy from one another, hence curbing malpractices. Mr. Akuffo-Badoo, who spoke to The Times on the sidelines of a seminar organized by WAEC in Accra, said the IBT would also curtail leakages of question papers as candidates and schools could have access to the papers only when they were seated for the paper. According to him, the IBT examination would also be marked on the internet thereby ensuring prompt release of results. He said the Council was considering beginning the IBT with the Information Communication Technology (ICT) paper and later rolling it out in other papers. According to him, the IBT would enable the country to join other countries such as Nigeria, the United States and England in writing examinations via the internet. Mr. Akuffo-Badoo was optimistic that the initiative would reduce the incidence of examination malpractices that was on the ascendency, while exposing students to the further use of ICT. Dr. Emmanuel Kitcher, head of IT Department of the Methodist University College Ghana, in a presentation, identified the increase in student population to be a major contributing factor affecting the processes involved in the organising examinations. He therefore, recommended strongly the use of IT-based solutions to alleviate the challenges confronting examinations in the country. According to him, the success or failure of the examination processes partly depended on the capabilities of the staff to perform their functions efficiently but a major part depended on acquiring the necessary software applications to support the processes. Dr. Kitcher expressed the hope that such on initiative would maintain high standards of service delivery, while benefiting the education system in the country. Source: Ghanaian Times