Sierra Leone’s Anti-Corruption Commission says it has uncovered examinations malpractice in the eastern Kono District during the ongoing West Africa-wide secondary school-leaving examinations.
A statement from the commission says this came about on Saturday 10th September during “random checks” it conducted at exams centres across the country aimed at “improving integrity” in the education sector.
The release says two pupils at the Koidu Secondary School and the Experimental Secondary School “were caught with cell phones containing model answers to the 2015/2016 WASSCE Mathematics examination paper”.
It says initial investigations have revealed that the two had fore knowledge of the questions.
They were taken in and questioned before they were released to continue writing their other exams. Their phones are still in the custody of the commission.
There has been a disquiet over examination malpractice in the country lately. Opening a conference on the matter last year, minister of education, Dr Minkailu Bah said exams malpractice “has become a cancer that is slowly eating away all that we hold dear in education”. Calling it “BIG and institutionalised BUSINESS”, he said it could collapse Sierra Leone and bring about chaos which neither the bloody civil war, nor the destructive Ebola outbreak managed to do.
(C) Politico 2016
