The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has strongly refuted allegations circulating in the media and on social media suggesting that candidates from private schools who sat for the 2026 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) for School Candidates were deliberately awarded poor grades. The Council has dismissed these claims as false, misleading, and entirely lacking factual basis.
Reassurance of Fair and Objective Assessment
WAEC has assured all stakeholders, parents, guardians, school proprietors, educational authorities, and the general public that its assessment and grading operations are guided by internationally accepted principles of fairness, objectivity, consistency, and integrity. The Council emphasized that under no circumstances does it discriminate against candidates based on whether they attended private or public institutions.
Explaining its marking procedures, WAEC highlighted that it employs rigorous quality assurance protocols to maintain strict anonymity between examiners and candidates’ scripts. This process involves swapping scripts across regions, coding and packaging materials, and allocating scripts randomly to examiners. All scripts are marked strictly according to standard marking schemes designed by subject experts, and the Council does not operate different grading systems or marking schemes for public and private schools.
Understanding the Stanine Grading System
Addressing concerns regarding score distribution, WAEC clarified that it utilizes the Stanine, or Standard Nine Grading System. This statistical method reports a candidate’s performance relative to the overall cohort of all candidates in a particular subject. The stanine scale spans from 1 to 9, where the entire population forms a single cohort distributed across specific percentage brackets:
Grade 1: Top 4% representing the highest performance.
Grade 2: Next 7% representing higher performance.
Grade 3: Next 12% representing high performance.
Grade 4: Next 17% representing high average.
Grade 5: Next 20% representing average performance.
Grade 6: Next 17% representing low average.
Grade 7: Next 12% representing low performance.
Grade 8: Next 7% representing lower performance.
Grade 9: Last 4% representing the lowest performance.
Unlike systems relying on fixed percentage score ranges, the stanine system considers the overall distribution of candidate performance, ensuring that a candidate’s grade reflects their relative standing. This approach promotes fairness by accounting for yearly variations in examination paper difficulty and guarantees that a student’s grade is determined solely by their performance against established standards.
Call for Vigilance Against Misinformation
The Council remains firmly committed to preserving the credibility of its examinations, ensuring equal opportunity and impartial script treatment for every candidate. WAEC has urged members of the public to ignore unsubstantiated claims that undermine public confidence in the examination system.
Furthermore, stakeholders with genuine concerns regarding results are encouraged to utilize established institutional channels for clarification rather than depending on speculation and misinformation. Concluding its statement, WAEC expressed appreciation to the government of Ghana, the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Education Service, school authorities, parents, and the general public for their continued confidence and support.
