WAEC Affirms International Standards in BECE Marking, Denies Discrimination

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has addressed concerns regarding the marking of the 2026 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) scripts, asserting that its assessment and grading processes align with internationally accepted principles of fairness, objectivity, consistency, and integrity. WAEC emphasized that it does not discriminate against candidates based on their school type, whether public or private.

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Under no circumstances does it discriminate against candidates on the basis of whether they attended private or public schools, it said.

During a press conference in Accra on Thursday, August 6, 2026, John Kapi, Head of Public Affairs at WAEC, detailed the rigorous quality assurance measures implemented for the 2026 BECE for School Candidates. These measures include script swapping across regions, coding, packaging, and random allocation to examiners to ensure anonymity between markers and scripts. All examiners, regardless of their school background, are required to adhere strictly to approved standard marking schemes developed by subject matter experts before commencing the marking process.

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Scripts are marked strictly according to approved standard marking schemes developed by experts in the various subject areas and all examiners (from both private and public schools) are made to acquaint themselves with it before the marking process commences.

Kapi reiterated that WAEC does not operate separate marking schemes or grading systems for public and private schools, a misconception the council has repeatedly addressed. The grading system employed is the Stanine, also known as the Standard Nine Grading System. This statistical method reports candidates' performance in relation to the overall performance of all candidates in a given subject. WAEC noted that the Ministry of Education recommended the use of the Stanine system.

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The council does not operate different marking schemes or grading systems for public and private schools. This misconception has been addressed repeatedly by the council over the years.

Explaining the Stanine system, Kapi stated that the entire population of examination candidates is considered one cohort. The system then categorizes scores into nine grades, with Grade 1 representing the highest performance and Grade 9 the lowest. WAEC indicated that the decision to continue using the Stanine system or switch to a Criterion Reference System rests with the Ministry of Education, as the government is the owner of the examination.

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So it is for those who own the examination to tell us whether they want to continue with the Stanine or not.