The Republic of Ghana will go ahead with the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) scheduled for July 20, 2020, despite Nigeria’s withdrawal, Deputy Director-General of GES, Kwabena Tandoh has said.
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Kwabena Tandoh’s comments follow Nigeria’s Minister for Education announcement that his country would not partake in the forthcoming 2020 WASSCE for school candidates amid the fast spreading of the novel coronavirus.
The Deputy Director-General of the Service speaking to JoyNews’ PM Express monitored by Hbtvghana.com explained that the management of the West African Examination Council (WAEC) is yet to officially inform Ghana of any such move by sister country Nigeria.
He however indicated that the other WAEC’s member countries had agreed to sit for the exams starting August 3 this year.
“All of them had agreed we had communication to that effect. While it was proposed that it was Ghana that was going to write a Ghana Exam, all of our member countries in a response from WAEC to the Director General or to my Director General to the Honourable Minister was that all of our member countries, and ‘all of our member countries’ means our five countries had agreed to write the August/September exams.
“We have not received any communication officially to the contrary and usually, we receive our communication from WAEC through official channels at the Ghana National Office and so if there is something in the news media we would at least wait for official communication. But as far as we are aware all member countries have agreed,” he said.
Kwabena Tandoh furthered that even if WAEC- Ghana confirms Nigeria’s pull out of the WASSCE, such decision by the Nigeria would not halt plans in Ghana or in other member countries to go ahead with the WASSCE.
He recounted an instance where the 2013 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone and Liberia had not stopped other WAEC member countries– Nigeria inclusive – from going ahead with their WASSCE examinations.
“It doesn’t change anything. Nigeria is still one of five countries. There are five countries, they all have equal vote and so we have had instances for example in 2013 when we had the Ebola crisis,” the Deputy D-G said.
“The rest of the countries; when you have a majority of the countries say they’re going to write an exam, the rest of the countries go ahead, WAEC makes specific arrangements for countries that are unable to write and so I believe that if with Nigeria making that decision once we receive the communication it’s still not going to change a thing.”
Meanwhile, the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) yesterday released the 2020 WASSCE timetable for the conduct of the WASSCE exams.
According to the timetable, prospective candidates will on August 3 write Integrated Science and ends with Principles of Cost Accounting and Technical Drawing on September 5, 2020.
See 2020 WASSCE timetable Below:
[pdf-embedder url=”https://hbtvghana.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/wassce-school-2020-timetable.pdf”]
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