Executive Director of the Institute for Education Studies (IFEST), Dr. Peter Partey Anti, says Ghana cannot fully understand the decline in the 2025 WASSCE results without analysing the performance of individual schools rather than relying only on national averages.
According to him, it is important to identify the specific schools bringing the national average down in order to understand what is truly affecting overall outcomes.
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) released the provisional results for the 2025 WASSCE for school candidates on November 29, 2025. The results showed a significant decline in performance compared to 2024, particularly in core subjects.
Speaking on Joy News and monitored by NewsDesksGH on December 1, Dr. Peter Partey Anti said the national average is driven by school-level outcomes.
“Certain schools continue to perform between 5 to 20% consistently. That is their pass rate. Now it’s this individual pass rate that are calculated to get the national average.”
Dr. Anti warned against people just assuming the the cause of the poor performance without technical review.
“We cannot continue to assume that the questions were difficult when we have not done item analysis,” he said.
He added that the chief examiner’s report is needed to explain how students responded in some of the papers such as core maths.
“The Chief examiner as well, we need his report. For us to see the reasons the Chief examiner gave for the responses that the students gave when they were writing the core maths.”
He argued that public discussion should move beyond national judgments to concrete action which is identifying weak schools, diagnosing causes, and deploying support.
“Why are we in a rush to give specific reasons to why students didn’t perform well when we don’t know what is happening in individual schools,“ he asked.
“This is what we in the policy space, we in the educational system should be focused on. These discussions should not end at ‘we are doing well as a country’ or ‘we’re not doing well as a country’.”
“It should end at a place where we take a decision as to which schools need our support in order that we’ll be able to bring their performance up.”
Performance in core subjects declined from 2024. For Core Mathematics, 48.73% achieved A1–C6 grades, with 26.77% failing (F9). In Social Studies, 55.82% passed (A1–C6) and 27.50% failed (F9). The failure rate (F9) in English Language increased to 12.86% from 5.88% in 2024, and in Integrated Science it rose to 16.05% from 7.12% in 2024.
