2020 WASSCE begins today

A total of 375, 737 candidates will from today, Monday, July 20 begin sitting for the 2020 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) in Ghana.

The figure which comprises 187,574 males and 188,163 females also represents the first batch of students to have enrolled in the government’s flagship free Senior High School (SHS) policy.

In all, 60 subjects including four core and 56 elective subjects are to be written.

Beginning with Project Work for Visual Arts candidates, the theory papers is set to commence from August 3, 2020, until September 5, 2020.

The Ashanti Region has the highest number of candidates of 87,295 followed by the Eastern Region which has 56,467 candidates partaking in the exams.

The West African Examination Council (WAEC) which conducts the WASSCE concurrently in anglophone West Africa; Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Liberia announced on 20th March 2020 that it was indefinitely suspending the annual exam due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, upon discussions with Ghana following the country’s decision to ease COVID-19 restrictions and allow final year students return to school, it was agreed that the exams will be held independently for Ghana.

For the first time, government absorbed the full examination fees of all students sitting for the examination at an estimated cost of GHS 75.4 million.