Mass WASSCE Failure: A Reflection of the True State of the Free Education Policy

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has released the provisional results of the 2025 WASSCE candidates, and as expected, the national debate has been ignited. Yet instead of welcoming the long-overdue exposure of the mass schemes that once helped academically weak students secure suspiciously high grades, many have chosen to peddle weak, politically-coloured explanations for this year’s poor performance.

The truth—if we are willing to confront it without partisan lenses—is simple: this is the real academic strength of our students, a reality the Free SHS policy unfortunately masked for years by eroding discipline, competitiveness, and seriousness across the system.

For a long time, teachers and concerned parents wondered how students who struggled to read a simple passage, write a coherent sentence, or even spell their own names correctly routinely emerged with enviable WASSCE grades. The mystery persisted because the public chose to look away.

Many of these students entered SHS with weak BECE results but were placed anyway because the Free SHS programme was implemented more as a political promise than an academic intervention. The philosophy became: no child must be left behind—not for academic reasons, not for indiscipline, not for anything. Repetition became rare, sanctions weakened, and standards dropped.

With this understanding, students quickly realised there were no real consequences for poor performance or bad behaviour. Academic commitment fell sharply. Indiscipline, absenteeism, and moral decay became widespread. Pregnant students remained on campus until their final exams; open fraternisation became normalised; and a few teachers were not without blame.

Yet these same students often produced glowing WASSCE results—an outcome that baffled teachers who knew their true abilities. While not every student benefited from dubious practices, far too many did.

Now that WAEC has released a results set that reflects the genuine academic work of students, some are claiming that the government deliberately engineered mass failure to avoid paying tertiary fees. But such arguments only trivialise a serious national crisis. Education must not become a playground for conspiracy theories.

The hard truth is that many students failed because they neglected their books, not because of political scheming. The government already spends huge sums on Free SHS—often at the expense of other critical sectors. If students benefit from free education, the least they can do is take their studies seriously. No country can sustain heavy educational investment while learners treat schooling as an afterthought.

It is far better for students to fail honestly and learn from their mistakes than to pass through fraudulent schemes and enter society with no real knowledge or skills. A generation of artificially successful students is a danger to national development.

This year’s mass failure should therefore be taken as a wake-up call—not a scandal. It signals that the era of cruising through WASSCE without real learning may finally be over. And ultimately, that is good for Ghana.

The Ghana Education Service must urgently reconsider reintroducing repetition for academically weak students, even if this increases the financial burden on the government. Quality is more important than quantity. Discipline must also be restored. Students who openly misbehave on social media should face consequences. With the double-track system now off the calendar, what remains is to ensure students sit up and learn.

Yet none of these reforms will succeed if teachers remain demotivated. Teachers must be respected, supported, and properly compensated. A system that demands excellence from learners cannot thrive on poorly treated educators. If the government continues to toy with the financial welfare of teachers, more mass failures will follow. It is not because any teacher takes delight in seeing students fail, but no teacher can always concentrate and deliver good lessons while thinking about how to feed his or her family and do other things to make life better.

In the end, anyone insisting that this year’s WASSCE performance is a political plot rather than a genuine reflection of academic work is simply refusing to face reality. The truth has been exposed—and Ghana must act on it.