The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) will next week commence the marking of answer scripts of over 1.5 million candidates, who sat for the May/June 2021 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

The Education Report gathered that the coordination and marking of the school candidates’ answer scripts will start from Wednesday, October 20, to November 8, 2021.

WAEC head of public affairs, Mr. Demianus Ojijeoju, who confirmed the exercise, said the council would use 85 marking venues across the country, while e-marking venues are located in Lagos, Ibadan and Benin.

Ojijeoju disclosed that, for the traditional marking, 75,369 examiners will handle answer scripts of 1,573,789 candidates, who sat for the school exam from August 16 to September 30, while 1,999 examiners will be involved in the e-marking.

Announcing the conduct of the school exam, WAEC head of national office (HNO), Mr. Patrick Areghan, said the council introduced operation 45/90 project. He explained that 45 days after examination was conducted, candidates will get their results while within 90 days, the certificate will be ready.

Areghan had assured the 1,573,789 candidates that WAEC staff will work round the clock to ensure the results are released on time so that they will use it for 2021/2022 admission exercise.

According to him, the 45/90 operational policy was introduced to ensure results are released within the time frame and maintained that management will meet the target.

He disclosed that staffers work on Saturdays and Sundays during marking of answer scripts, “We bend backward to work day and night to process the results.”

Areghan said candidates were examined in 76 subjects, made up of 197 papers and that about 25,000 senior teachers would be participating in the examination as supervisors.

“The statistics for the school examination reveals that 19,425 recognized secondary schools, comprising 8,052 public and 11,373 private schools, spread across the nooks and crannies of the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, presented 1,573,789 candidates, comprising 792,620 males (50.36%) and 781,169 females (49.64%), for the examination.”

Many SS3 students seeking admission into universities, polytechnics and colleges of education took the 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) as awaiting result candidates and are hoping the results would be released before the admission exercise starts.

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