Sierra Leone Withholds Exam Results for 47,454 Students Over Suspected Cheating, Lecturer Reports
Nearly one in four entries for the West African school-leaving exam is on hold, leaving families waiting with no announced timetable.
See where this is ›FREETOWN, Sierra Leone —
Sierra Leone has withheld West African Senior School Certificate Examination results for 47,454 candidates, according to a commentary published Oct. 31 in The Sierra Leone Telegraph. Its author, Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim Justice Ganawah, a senior lecturer in economics at Fourah Bay College, wrote that Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education Conrad Sackey announced the results Tuesday, Oct. 27.
Ganawah, who wrote in a personal capacity, said the West African Examinations Council list has 200,756 candidates: 141,810 with results, 47,454 withheld and 11,492 absent. He calculated that withheld results are 23.6% of all entries, the highest share in at least four years. He said 26,735 of the withheld candidates are girls.
The ministry cites 13 categories of suspected irregularity, Ganawah wrote. The examples he gave include collusion, sharing answers in the exam room, and using social media or artificial intelligence to get and spread answers.
He compared the figure with two other West African countries. Nigeria withheld 167,486 results, or 8.6% of 1.95 million candidates, and Ghana canceled 8,295, or 1.6%, he wrote.
Among candidates with results, 91,122 earned five credits, which Ganawah calculated as 64.3%. He reported that the mathematics credit rate rose from 46.71% to 62.15%, while the English rate fell from 11.77% to 9.77%. He said a system producing more passes and less learning should trouble the country.
Ganawah called a withheld result “a suspicion, not a verdict” and urged an urgent review, with reasons given to each candidate and a right of appeal to an independent panel. He also asked universities to offer provisional admission while cases are pending.
What we don't know yet: Watchman News could not independently confirm these figures, which come from one commentary, and did not find a ministry statement or another news report on them. Ganawah said the ministry has not released full statistical tables. The commentary describes no announced appeal process or timetable for withheld candidates.
