BECE question leakages stopped when I became MoE – Adutwum

Former Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, says examination malpractice and question leakages in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) came to an end during his tenure as the Minister in Charge of Education.

In an interview monitored by Pretertiary.com, he said, “I know that you can stop cheating in schools and it’s easy,” adding that “Do you know that examination leakages stopped when I was the Minister?”

The immediate past Minister for Education explained that a key intervention was changing how questions for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) were prepared and deployed.

Unlike the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), he noted, the BECE is a locally managed examination, giving authorities greater flexibility to introduce innovative measures.

“What we did with Basic Education Certificate Examination was that it was a Ghanaian exam, so I directed that we were going to have separate questions for different regions in Ghana,” Dr Adutwum stated.

According to him, the approach immediately weakened the value of leaked questions, as candidates could no longer rely on circulated materials to match what would appear in their examination centres.

“So when questions leak, and you think you have questions and you’re in the Volta Region, it could be questions meant for the Ashanti Region,” the former Minister for Education said in the interview.

Dr Adutwum said the effect of the reform was swift and noticeable, particularly online, saying, “The moment we did that that year, all the websites that were selling questions shut down because it was useless.”

He noted that the Ministry went a step further the following year by introducing serialisation, a system where question papers were arranged differently for various examination centres across the country.

“If you are at Kokrobite DA Examination Centre, question one could be question twenty at Odododiodio or Labone,” he said.

According to Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, the combination of regionalised questions and serialisation brought Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) question leakages to an end in the country.

“At that point, examination leakages on the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) were over,” the Bosomtwe Member of Parliament said, speaking on Starr FM’s GHToday with Lily Mohammed.

Relatedly, the former Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, has called on the government to adopt serialisation of in-hall examination questions to curb examination malpractice in the country’s national and international examinations.

In an interview monitored by Pretertiary.com, he said serialisation — where candidates receive different sets of questions or the same questions arranged in varying order — was introduced at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) under his tenure and proved effective in curbing cheating and leakages.

“Sometimes the questions would be arranged differently; my question 1 would be question 20 in another centre. So you couldn’t have gotten leaked questions to disseminate. That stopped the leakages at the BECE level,” the past Education Minister and Member of Parliament for Bosomtwe constituency explained.

Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum said that although collaboration with West African Examinations Council (WAEC) had introduced some level of serialisation, more needed to be done to ensure integrity.

“What we need to do more is serialisation within the hall, so that if I’m sitting next to you, our questions are different. Some universities in Ghana are already doing it. I don’t understand why we can’t do it at the WAEC level,” he stressed.

The immediate past Minister in Charge of Education argued that in-hall serialisation of examination questions would end examination malpractice and discourage the culture of shortcuts in education.

“Exam cheating diminishes our education system. A child who knows he can cheat will not study; a teacher who knows he can help students to cheat will not teach. If we want quality education, we need to eliminate cheating within exam halls and leakages before exams to lay a strong foundation for quality learning,” he said.