WASSCE 2025 – A national moment of reckoning for Ghana’s Education System

Story By Kobina Welsing On December 4, 2025, 2:02 AM

The release of the 2025 West African Examinations Council (WAEC) results has exposed a crisis that demands the full attention of educators, parents, policymakers, and society at large. In core subjects such as Mathematics and Social Studies, the numbers are troubling.

More than half of the candidates who sat the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) failed Core Mathematics — the worst performance recorded in seven years.

These results should not be dismissed as a bad crop or an isolated failure. They are symptomatic of deeper systemic challenges in Ghana’s secondary-school ecosystem. Among the reasons cited by the Head of Public Affairs at WAEC, John Kapi, are glaring skill gaps among students: difficulty representing mathematical information diagrammatically, inability to handle real-life problem-solving, weak competence in data interpretation (e.g. cumulative frequency tables), poor translation of word problems into mathematical expressions, and inability to apply concepts like simple interest.

John Kapi also observed that many candidates relied excessively on rote learning, which proved inadequate for the 2025 exam format. He argued that this reliance undermined their ability to apply knowledge — a requirement this time around.

But the blame — and the responsibility for change — must be shared more broadly. The Ghana Education Service (GES) has described the results as a “worrying situation,” one that compels an urgent national policy discussion. GES officials have emphasized that the poor results reflect broader issues of quality, instructional practices, and resource constraints across many schools.

From Symptoms to Systemic Failure

At first glance, the failures might be reduced to weaknesses in individual students. But a closer look shows that many of the problems begin long before the exam hall.

Skill-Based Deficiencies Rising From Rote-Learning Culture

For years, Ghana’s classrooms — especially in public schools — have operated on a culture of memorization. The result: students may recall facts, but they cannot apply them. The 2025 WASSCE makes clear that memorization alone won’t suffice. As John Kapi noted, students struggled with tasks requiring understanding, interpretation, inference, and application.

Teaching Methods Misaligned With Real-World Application

Exam questions that test real-life application, data handling, interpretation, and reasoning demand teaching that goes beyond chalk-and-talk. Schools need to nurture analytical thinking and problem-solving from the onset, and not only during exam preparation. The continued failure suggests many schools have not adapted teaching methods to meet these demands.

Inadequate Learning Resources and Infrastructure

- Quality teaching demands more than a good teacher. Laboratories, libraries, updated textbooks, and learning aids (e.g. calculators, graph papers, technology tools) are critical — especially for a subject like Mathematics. Without these resources, the chances of mastering practical and applied aspects of the syllabus are slim. In many public schools across Ghana, resource constraints are real and persistent. GES’s call for urgent review and support recognizes this challenge.

Weak Institutional Culture for Continuous Learning and Remediation

Too often, teaching and revision are concentrated in the lead-up to exams — not spread over the full term. This undermines sustained learning, consolidation of concepts, and the ability to remediate gaps early. The 2025 results suggest that many students never truly internalized the concepts — their learning remained superficial.

Examination Integrity and Supervision — A Double-Edged Sword

Interestingly, WAEC states that stricter supervision and reduced malpractice may have contributed to this year’s poor results. According to John Kapi, many students who in previous years may have relied on illicit assistance, external notes, or leaks, were forced to depend entirely on their own knowledge and understanding this time. Those without the conceptual foundation suffered accordingly.
While this strengthens the credibility of the 2025 results, it also exposes how deeply malpractice had masked learning deficiencies before — a revelation that should force a national reckoning.

What This Means for Ghana

If this performance is not reversed, Ghana risks graduating citizens whose theoretical knowledge is untested by practical competence. That has implications for tertiary education, employability, national competitiveness, and the long-term productivity of the workforce.

Moreover, this generation of WASSCE graduates may enter higher institutions or the job market ill-prepared for the realities of critical thinking, problem solving, and applied reasoning. That is a disadvantage that compounds over time and threatens national development.

It is not enough to lament what has happened — we must demand answers and implement reforms.

Recommendations: How to Arrest the Slide

Given the magnitude of the problem, what is required is bold, systemic, and coordinated action — not piecemeal fixes. Below are concrete steps that government, GES, schools, parents and communities should work on together.

Revamp Teaching Methodologies: Move from Rote to Application-Based Learning

Schools should emphasize conceptual understanding, reasoning, and problem-solving from the early years of senior high school.
Teachers must be trained in modern pedagogical methods, especially for Mathematics, to help students apply abstract concepts to real-world scenarios.
Incorporate regular practical/data-handling exercises, group work, and contextual assignments — not just memorization.

Improve Learning Resources and Infrastructure

Invest in science and mathematics laboratories, libraries, ICT tools, and up-to-date textbooks and reference materials.
Provide graph papers, calculators, projectors, and other aids to facilitate interactive teaching and learning.
Ensure rural and underprivileged schools are not left behind — equitable distribution matters.

Institutionalize Continuous Assessment and Remediation

Schools should embed continuous assessment throughout the school year, tracking students’ strengths and weaknesses early.
Identify students who struggle and provide remedial classes — not just in the weeks preceding the WASSCE.
Encourage peer-group learning, study clubs, after-school tutorials, or weekend workshops to consolidate learning over time.

Strengthen Teacher Training, Supervision, and Accountability

GES should expand in-service training, mentorship, and professional development for teachers — especially in mathematics, sciences, and social studies.
District and regional education offices must enforce accountability for teacher attendance, lesson planning, and lesson delivery.
School heads should be empowered to lead academic committees to monitor curriculum coverage, progress tracking, and resource allocation.

Foster a Culture of Learning — In Homes, Communities, and Schools

Parents and guardians need to be more involved in their children’s learning: monitor study habits, limit distractions like excessive phone use, and encourage disciplined study routines.
Community stakeholders, including alumni associations, local NGOs, and education advocates, can support by organizing after-school learning support or mentoring programmes.
Schools should encourage extracurricular activities that build discipline, ambition, curiosity, and academic resilience.

Reform Academic Calendar and Curriculum Delivery Plans

The academic calendar must be consistent, predictable, and aligned with pedagogic needs rather than administrative convenience.
Curriculum delivery plans should ensure that syllabus coverage is paced to allow proper concept development, revision, and practice.
Avoid compressing learning into short bursts ahead of exams; instead, distribute teaching, revision, and remediation across the full academic cycle.

Protect Examination Integrity — But Complement with Quality Teaching

Maintain and strengthen measures to prevent exam malpractice — the stricter supervision in 2025 revealed the true state of learning, and that transparency must persist.
But beyond supervision, invest in building students’ genuine competence so they don’t rely on shortcuts.
Promote a culture where education is valued for its future benefits — not just for passing exams.

A Call to Action: For the Nation — and for the Future

The 2025 WASSCE results are more than exam scores: they are a mirror reflecting weaknesses in our education system. They reveal a country that risks producing graduates who can memorise but cannot think; who can recall formulas but cannot apply them; who pass exams but are unprepared for real-world challenges.

We must not treat this as a temporary slump. We must treat it as a call to rebuild — from the classroom, to the administrative offices, to the national policy level.

To the government: provide resources, oversight, and policy frameworks that prioritize quality over quantity.
To GES: lead reforms in teacher training, infrastructure investment, curriculum delivery, and accountability.
To school leaders and teachers: embrace pedagogies that nurture understanding, reasoning, and problem-solving.
To parents and communities: re-commit to supporting your children’s education, not only financially but also through encouragement, supervision, and constructive involvement.
To students: recognise that learning should not be reduced to exam-year panic; the pursuit of excellence must be continuous, disciplined, and purposeful.

Ghana’s future depends on this generation — and the next. Let 2025 be remembered not just for poor results, but as the moment when we resolved to demand better — for our children, and for our nation.