Examination malpractice in Ghanaian Schools: Evidence from 2018 to 2021

This study investigated Examination Malpractices in Ghana ranging from 2018 to 2021. WAEC cancels the results of candidates who sit for BECE and WASSCE and even hand-prohibited some from WAEC-administered examinations over the years. But cheating continues and, in most cases, increases year by year. In an attempt to unravel the nature of malpractices, the causes, and people who engage in fraud in the conduct of examinations in Ghana, content analysis was used as the design. Secondary data from WAEC and the abstracts, introductions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations of authoritative articles were purposefully selected for the study. The findings revealed that examination malpractices take several forms in Ghana, including impersonation, syndicate cheating in schools, smuggling of mobile phones into examination halls by candidates, and restriction of access to school compounds for surveillance. It also highlighted concealing materials in washrooms, pockets, private parts, and pen corks; giraffes; illegally assisting candidates, and colluding with invigilators to replace the original answer script with a pre-prepared answer script. The study also found the pressure to meet high parental demands for excellent results, bad study habits, a desire to avoid failure, anxiety, and panic, a lack of academic competence, incompetent teachers, an inability to cover the syllabus, bad teaching methods, inadequate seating arrangements, and congested examination halls as the causes of examination malpractices in Ghana. The study recommended that WAEC collaborate with the Ghana Education Service to make the cheating policy available to students at all levels of education, including the punishment for cheaters if they are caught. It is also noted that to avoid improper seating arrangements, WAEC should adopt snake-like seating with a standard spacing of 1.50 cm.