The education policy think tank Africa Education Watch has intensified calls for stricter enforcement of accountability within the country’s secondary education system, urging the removal of heads of schools where examination malpractice exceeds fifty percent of candidates in any subject without prior official reporting.
The organisation argues that entrenched failures in supervisory responsibility at the school level have contributed significantly to the persistence of cheating in national examinations, thereby undermining academic integrity and eroding public confidence in assessment outcomes.
Speaking at a press briefing on education sector monitoring findings, the Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, called for the introduction of a strengthened accountability framework within the Ghana Education Service to directly link school leadership responsibility to examination conduct within their institutions.
He warned that without decisive intervention, Ghana risks a sharp escalation in malpractice levels, projecting that the country could be approaching a twenty percent incidence rate by 2026 if current trends persist. He attributed this concern to systemic weaknesses in supervision, coordination, and enforcement during examination administration.
According to Kofi Asare, school heads occupy a central position in the examination ecosystem, as they oversee the environments in which assessments are conducted, coordinate internal supervisory arrangements, and nominate invigilators for approval by the West African Examinations Council. As such, he argued that they cannot be insulated from accountability when widespread irregularities occur under their jurisdiction.
He emphasised that failure to sanction institutional leadership in cases of significant malpractice has fostered a culture of impunity, enabling recurrent violations to persist with minimal deterrent consequences. In his view, meaningful reform requires that responsibility be extended beyond individual candidates to include administrative leadership where systemic breaches are evident.
The think tank is therefore urging the Ministry of Education to adopt a more stringent enforcement posture, including disciplinary action against heads of schools whose institutions recorded substantial levels of malpractice in the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination. The proposed reforms, it argues, are necessary to restore credibility to the examination system and ensure behavioural change across schools ahead of future examination cycles.
Africa Education Watch maintains that only a decisive crackdown on institutional complicity will reverse the trend and safeguard the integrity of academic assessment in Ghana, particularly as the country prepares for subsequent examination periods in 2026 and beyond.
