Students caught with phones in exam halls will re-sit BECE – WAEC

Junior High School (JHS) students who sat for this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and were caught with mobile phones in examination halls will be required to rewrite the national examination next year.

The Head of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) Public Relations, John Kapi, in an interview monitored by Pretertiary.com, disclosed that 95% of the reported malpractice in the BECE was tied to mobile phone possession.

“At the end of this, the marking process, we cancelled 718 subject results, that is, for 718 candidates. Then we had 177 of them who had their entire results cancelled. We withheld 1,240 results of candidates, and then also the entire results of ninety-three candidates have withheld for further investigation. A number of schools have had, I mean, for the entire school, subject results have been cancelled for about 119 schools,” he said.

The not-for-profit-making organization spokesperson explained that WAEC’s rules explicitly bar candidates from entering examination halls with mobile phones or other electronic devices capable of storing information.

“Any candidate who assaults an examination official will have their entire results cancelled, and so and of course, anybody who has any other electronic gadget that has, you know, facilities that can store information for later would also have their entire results cancelled. So, basically, these are the things. Most of them, actually, or I would say about 95% of them had mobile phone infractions,” he emphasized.

A total of 603,328 candidates, comprising 297,250 males and 306,078 females, from nineteen thousand, five hundred and five (19,505) participating Junior High Schools (JHSs) entered for the school examination.

This includes seventy-two (72 ) candidates with visual impairment, two hundred and thirty-nine (239) with hearing impairment, and one hundred and sixty-one (161) candidates with other test accommodation needs.

The examination was conducted at two thousand, two hundred and thirty-seven (2,237 ) centres across the country. Out of the total number, two thousand, five hundred and twenty-six (2,526) candidates were absent.

The BECE for Private Candidates recorded a total entry figure of one thousand, three hundred and ninety (1,661) candidates. This was made up of eight hundred and fifty-eight (858) males and eight hundred and three (803 ) females.

Fifteen (15) centres, mostly in the regional capitals, were used for the BECE for Private Candidates. Out of the total number of candidates who entered for the examination, fifty-seven (57) were absent.

Relatedly, Africa Education Watch (EduWatch) has said the West African Examinations Council’s (WAEC) enhanced efficiency in detecting examination malpractice could be the reason more Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results were withheld this year.

In a social media post sighted by Pretertiary.com, the Executive Director of EduWatch, Mr Kofi Asare, described this year’s withheld BECE results as alarming, citing a spike from 49 affected candidates in 2022 to 1,333 in 2025.

“While candidate numbers grew by only 5% between 2024 and 2025, cancellations rose by over 100 per cent, and withheld results by almost 3,900 per cent,” the Africa Education Watch Director said in the social media post.