In a reviewed result released by the management of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), 62.96 per cent of candidates who wrote the West African Senior School Certificate Exams (WASSCE) obtained credits and above in the minimum of five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.
The figure emanated from the 1,969,313 candidates who sat for the examination, out of which 1,239,884 passed the five subjects, indicating a 24.68 increase compared to the 754,545 candidates, representing 38.32 per cent earlier announced.
WAEC attributed the initial mass failure to the wrong serialised code file used in printing the English Language objective tests (paper 3).
The examination body had attributed the poor performance to the deployment of a serialisation approach to four subjects, which were English Language, Biology, Economics and Mathematics in this year’s examination.
The serialisation approach aimed at curbing examination malpractice involved differentiating questions on candidates’ papers.
This year’s results triggered a flood of complaints from relevant bodies in the education sector, largely due to the mass failure in the English Language, which appeared to prompt the examination body to conduct a review.
Admitting the errors encountered during the examination body’s internal post-examination review, the council’s head of Nigeria’s office, Amos Dangut, during a press briefing held on Friday, attributed it to printing flaws, saying it was erroneously done by one of its service providers.
WAEC had on Thursday said it is currently reviewing the recently released results of the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for School Candidates, after it discovered technical issues in the results.
The technical errors which inadvertently negatively affects candidates affected Mathematics, English Language, Biology, and Economics.
WAEC said the glitch was linked to a new security feature known as paper serializatio, which was deployed in these key subjects as part of its anti-exam malpractice strategy.
The West African regional body had officially released the 2025 WASSCE results for school candidates on Monday, August 4, 2025, with only 754,545 candidates, 38.32% of the approximately 1,969,313 candidates who sat for the examinations, achieving credits in five subjects, including English and Mathematics.
This was a 33.8% drop in performance compared to last year. Notably, 192,089 results were withheld due to suspected examination malpractice.
Just two days later, on Wednesday, August 6, WAEC shut down its result-checking portal, blaming it on technical glitches but assuring the public that the system would be restored within 24 hours.
