The entire results of 174 candidates who sat for the 2021 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), have been cancelled.

This was disclosed by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) in its 2021 provisional WASSCE results.

The Council said the results were cancelled due to “various examination malpractices such as bringing foreign materials including mobile phones into the examination hall, tearing off parts of question papers and collusion.”

The entire results of 3,667 candidates have also been withheld, pending investigations into various cases of examination malpractices that were detected during and after the examination.

Withheld results may be cancelled or released based on the outcome of the investigations.

WAEC said there were improvements in the performance of candidates at Grades A1 to C6 in Integrated Science and Social Studies in 2021 as against 2020.

On the other hand, English Language and Mathematics (Core) recorded a decline in the performance of candidates at Grades A1 to C6 in 2021 as compared to 2020.

A recent report by the Africa Education Watch claimed that 55% of the WASSCE papers leaked between 10 and 1 hour before the start of the exam.

The council had admitted that extracts of questions for the elective Mathematics 2 paper and Section ‘A’ of English Language 2, were circulated on some social media platforms prior to the examination.

It however said the circulation was not extensive.