It said the council has withheld the results of 1,298 candidates on suspicion of various offences, adding: “This excludes the subject results of candidates who were detected by the Item Differentia Profile (IDP) software to have cheated in the objective tests.

“The withheld results will be released after the conclusion of investigations into various cases of examination malpractice detected during and after the conduct of the examination,” a statement signed by the Head of Public Affairs of WAEC, Mr Agnes Teye-Cudjoe, said.

Dispatch

It said the council was in  the  process of despatching  the  results  to  the  schools  through  the municipal/district directors  of education.

Meanwhile, it said, the council had posted the results online and candidates who so desire might access their results online at the council's website.

A total of 468,060 candidates made up of 241,154 males and 226,906 females sat for the examination. The figure is 1.53 per cent higher than that of the previous year.  The candidates were from a total  of 15,185 schools and the examination  was administered  at 1,702 centres.  Out of those who initially registered for the examination, 3,315 (0.71 per cent) of the candidates were absent.

Grading

WAEC said the Stanine grading system was used for the BECE with Grade One as the highest and Grade Nine being the lowest. With this grading system, it must be noted that there are no failures in BECE.

“The council takes this opportunity to advise candidates to do independent work in the examination hall and to avoid seeking any form of illegal assistance as such acts would be detected and sanctions applied accordingly,” it said.

It expressed its deepest appreciation to all stakeholders, especially the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Education Service (GES), supervisors, invigilators, the Ghana Police Service, examiners and all who in various ways helped in the successful conduct of the examination and the timeous release of results.

Free SHS

Candidates of this BECE who have over the past couple of weeks been highly expectant of the results will be the first beneficiaries of the free senior high school (SHS) programme launched by the government on July 27, 2017.

Under the free SHS, all fees approved by the GES Council for first- year students, other than PTA dues, will be absorbed by the government.