Head of Public Relations at the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), John Kapi, said social media is a possible contributor to the high failure rates recorded in this year’s WASSCE.
According to him, some students used pidgin and social media jargon in their scripts, which affected the quality of their answers.
Speaking on Channel 1 TV and monitored by NewsDesksGH on December 5, he said society must pay attention to the heavy influence of social media on young people.
“We are all kind of, even adults, sometimes are just overly glued to our phones,” he said.
According to him, examiners recorded several instances where candidates wrote in informal language not suitable for a national exam.
“If you look at the English report that came out for example the chief examiner indicates that there was a lot of pidgin in what the candidates wrote. And they term something social media language or jargon,” Mr. Kapi explained.
“Things that we probably would use when we are on WhatsApp. Some abbreviations that we use. That is not formal,” he added.
Mr. Kapi noted that many candidates particularly struggled with the English Language paper, where issues of grammar, spelling and expression were widespread.
“Especially for the English paper, some of them actually could not use standard language. The language was substandard, they could not spell some words very well,” he said.
He urged parents and teachers as well to pay closer attention to this issue.
“We would have to look at it holistically from the home,” he said.
This year’s results show a sharp rise in failure rates across all four core subjects compared to 2024.
26.77% of candidates received an F9 compared in Core Mathematics to 6.10% in 2024.
Social Studies also saw a significant jump, with 27.50% failing the subject opposed to 9.55% last year.
In Integrated Science, the F9 rate increased from 7.12% to 16.05%. The English Language also showed 12.86% of candidates failing the subject this year, compared to 5.88% in 2024.
