The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has cancelled the entire results of 64 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) candidates for flouting the examination rules and regulations.
The affected candidates included those who took mobile phones to the examination hall and got external assistance.
In addition, 398 candidates had their subject results cancelled for engaging in examination malpractices including taking foreign materials into the examination hall and collusion.
These were contained in a statement issued by WAEC on the release of provisional results of the 2014 BECE.
The release also said entries of 13 candidates were nullified because they were found not to be bona fide students of the schools which registered them for the examination and that their continuous assessment scores had been forged.
Out of the 420,188 candidates from 12,562 schools who wrote the examination, 11,759 candidates from 337 schools have had their results withheld pending the conclusion of investigations into alleged examination malpractices.
The statement explained that the Stanine grading system was used for the BECE, with Grade One as the highest and Grade Nine the lowest.
Stanine (Standard NINE) is a method of scaling test scores on a nine-point standard scale with a mean of five and a standard deviation of two.
The council, according to the statement, was in the process of despatching the results to the schools through the municipal/district directors of education.
“Meanwhile, the council has hosted the results online and candidates who so desire may access their results at the council’s website using a scratch card,” it advised.
A total of 422,946 candidates, made up of 219,394 males and 194,854 females, registered for the examination.
The figure was 8.15 per cent higher than that of the previous year.
The candidates were from 12,562 schools and the examination was conducted at 1,431 centres.
The WAEC statement explained that 2,758 candidates, representing 0.59 per cent of those who had initially registered for the examination, were absent.
Source: graphic online