Ethical Administrative Process and Malpractices in Public Examinations: A Study of the West African Examinations Council (2010-2020)

Abstract

Possessing the West African Senior School Certificate (WASSCE) in the Anglophone West African countries has become the basis for securing admissions into higher institutions, employments and elective positions.  Consequently, candidates who are desperate resort to examination malpractices to obtain it.  The government and WAEC are therefore compelled to devise measures to guarantee integrity in the management of the examination process.  Despite these measures, the integrity of the examination continued to be compromised in the last ten years.   This study therefore, investigated the relationship between the administrative processes and the accompanying increase in the examination malpractice. Mixed method design was adopted for the study. The population was 144,070 with a sample size of 1,157 determined using Krejcie and Morgan (1970).   Purposive and stratified sampling techniques were adopted in selecting the respondents with a response rate of 85%.   Questionnaire and interview guide were used as data collection instruments.  Descriptive statistics and content analysis were employed for the quantitative and qualitative data respectively. Findings showed that there was a significant relationship (r = -0.684; p<0.05) between the effectiveness of the pre-examination processes adopted by WAEC and the level of examination malpractice in the WASSCE, between the effectiveness of the processes employed during the conduct of the examination (R² = 0.73; F = 117.64; t = 7.560) and the level of examination malpractice and the effectiveness of the post-examination processes (r = -0.652; p<0.05) and the level of examination malpractice. The study concluded that though the pre and post-examination administrative processes adopted by WAEC were ethical enough and should have been effective in curbing examination malpractice, this has not really succeeded due to human factors. The study recommended that the recruitment policy for examination officials should be reviewed to give special consideration to integrity while the ad hoc staff should be adequately remunerated.

Keywords: Ethical processes, Examination malpractice, Integrity, Compromised, Administrative.