The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has released the results of the 2023 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

The WAEC Head of National Office (HNO), Patrick Areghan, announced the release of the results at a press conference in Lagos on Monday, August 7, 2023.

Areghan, however, said the Council withheld the results of 262,803 candidates who wrote the examination.

He said the results were withheld in connection with various reported cases of examination malpractice.

According to him, the figure represents 16.29 per cent of the total number of candidates that sat for the examination.

He said this was 6.54 per cent lower than the 22.83 per cent recorded for School Candidates in 2022.

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He added that all reported cases were being investigated and reports of the investigations would be presented to the appropriate committee of the council for consideration and final decisions.

Areghan stated that the committee’s decisions will be communicated to the affected candidates through their various schools in due course.

“Candidates affected by these decisions can now call for redress if they so wish. This is our humble way of giving the candidates a fair hearing and thus, maintaining their fundamental human rights,” he added.

Giving a further breakdown of the results, Areghan noted that a total of 1,621,884 candidates registered for the examination, from 20,867 recognised secondary schools in the country.

He said of the registered candidates, 1,613,733 sat the examination.

The WAEC HNO said the examination was also administered to candidates from some schools in Benin Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, and Equatorial Guinea, where the Nigerian curriculum for Senior Secondary Schools was being used.

He noted that of the total number of candidates that registered for the examination, 70,794 are with varying degrees of Special Needs.

According to him, out of this number, 109 are visually impaired, 386 with impaired hearing, 33 spastic cum mentally challenged, and 34 others physically challenged.

On the categories of the results, he said out of the number of candidates that sat the examination, a total of 1,476,565, representing 91.5 per cent had their results fully processed and released.

Areghan noted that 137,168 others, representing 8.5 per cent, had a few of their subjects still being processed, due to some shortcomings, ranging from non-challance, lethargy, incomplete CASS upload, disobedience of rubrics, and others associated with the schools and candidates concerned.

He explained that efforts were being made to complete the resolution process, to enable all the affected candidates to speedily get their results fully processed and released within the next couple of days.

The WAEC boss spoke on the analysis of the statistics of the performance of candidates in the examination.

He said it showed that out of the 1,613,733 candidates that sat the examination, a total of 1,361,608 representing 84.38 per cent obtained credit and above in a minimum of any 5 subjects, that is, with or without English Language and/or Mathematics.

Areghan said: “A total of 1,287,920 candidates, representing 79.81 per cent , obtained credits and above in a minimum of five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.

“Of this number, 616,914, that is 47.9 per cent, were male candidates, while 671,006, that is 52.1 per cent, were female candidates.

“The percentage of candidates in this category in the WASSCE for School Candidates in 2022, that is, those who obtained credit and above in five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics, was 76.36 per cent , thus, there is a 3.45 per cent decrease in performance in this regard.”

The Star