Public Awareness of Malpractice during the Examinations by WAEC in Nigeria

Academic Paper from the year 2017 in the subject Sociology - Individual, Groups, Society, , language: English, abstract: This paper examined the impact of awareness creation and administration of various sanctions on examination malpractice, using the West African Examinations Council as a case study. The effects of the awareness level and the sanctions were also critically x-rayed with a view to applauding the results if encouraging or suggesting an improved strategy for an effective control and noticeable reduction in the rate of examination malpractice in public examinations like the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) conducted by WAEC. The rate of candidates' involvement in malpractice during the public examinations conducted across West African subregion is of great concern to many stakeholders. In spite of stringent measures taken to curb malpractice, the rate of involvement seems to be increasing geometrically. It is in reaction to this worrisome trend that this study was conducted to probe into the root-cause of continuous indulgence in malpractice during the examinations conducted by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) in Nigeria. This is with a view to measuring the public awareness level as regards the implications of involvement in examination malpractice and appealing to their moral instinct to eschew this menace, using the proposed theory of awareness-creation and sanction-strategy (SACS). The study employed purposive sampling technique in selecting 10 (ten) states where various stakeholders in education were sampled for the administration of a questionnaire designed to gauge their knowledge of implications of involvement in examination malpractice of different forms. One thousand copies (1,000) of the instrument were administered in the States of Abia, Katsina, Kebbi, Benue, Kwara, Cross-River, Bayelsa, Nasarawa Niger and Edo among the Senior Secondary three Students, their teachers and parents of the same students. These states were purposively selected for their high level of malpractice recorded in the examination conducted by WAEC in recent times. Out of the administered copies of the instrument, nine hundred and forty-two (942) were retrieved for analysis.