WAEC is a body that conducts post junior and senior secondary examinations, and grades students according to their abilities to show understanding of a number of topics in a combination of subjects across West Africa. The exam is widely accepted in countries like The United States, and The United Kingdom, however, there has been the constant mass failure of Students in the examination which has become a great source of concern to the local and international society.
Research by V.G Ameh stated that about 70% of students failed WAEC in 2014. Consequently,a parent when interviewed about the failure rate that year blamed teachers for the poor performance of students, stressing that most educators do not follow the syllabus in teaching students while those who followed the syllabus end up not finishing it before making students sit for the examinations. Another researcher, Uduh(2009)stated that the high percentage of candidates who fail the WASSCE yearly is reflected in the low percentage of the candidates that meet the University admissions requirement.
The issue of failing the WAEC examination is one of the problems Primary and Secondary (K-12)Schools have been battling in recent times and one that has prevented them from fulfilling their vision of producing top-notch Students that can comfortably compete with any other around the world.
In our research, we discovered a number of Teachers are unable to track students’ learning evidence, find out weak areas, and then improve on them before permitting students to sit for examinations. This is only a pointer to the decline in the quality of teaching and learning received by students and therefore leaves a big loophole.
In Addition, there is a dire need for better informed and well-equipped teachers who can greatly improve the quality of teaching which will, in turn, have a positive impact on the educational system and by extension, the general performance of the WAEC examinations.
The big question then is, how can teachers be better equipped?
On Edves, weekly formative assessments are generated and sent to parents on every topic, in every subject. The System is developed for School owners, Teachers, and Parents who desire to transcend from the norm, enabling teachers to track students’ learning progress through standard lesson planning, attendance, formative and summative assessment. These present the right data analytics of students’ cognitive levels, useful for creating interventions before any major examination is written.
The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning progress by providing ongoing feedback that can be used by teachers to improve teaching, and by students to improve their own learning. This can be grouped into 2; the first is the ‘Assessment before learning’, which implies each student can be weighed on prerequisite knowledge in a particular topic even before lessons commence. The Homework module and CBT make it possible for pre-grading to take place, helping the teachers understand each Student’s current level per time.
The second aspect is the ‘‘Assessment after learning’’, which provides evidence of a Student’s learning progress. This is quite important in discovering the peculiar strengths and weaknesses of each individual learner in various topics and subjects, providing schools with up-to-date information on performance such that teachers can specifically target difficult areas tailored to the learning needs of every child.
The system further analyzes and breaks down this data, which can be sent out to Parents or Guardians on an already customized template, and the fact that parents can receive these reports via Email and SMS makes it all the more fascinating.
Teachers can now manage students’ records, schedule tests and examinations, share and assess assignments, class notes, and lots more, thereby ensuring the Student is adequately prepared for any upcoming examinations.
Examination failure has definitely become a thing of the past with this kind of effective monitoring system in place.No Student has to go through the pain of writing WAEC 5 times before they have the chance to further their education,so also can WAEC as a body buy back its reputation.
