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The West African Examination Council (WAEC) has set aside the 2026 National Primary School Examination (NPSE) results of 1,927 candidates, citing suspected examination malpractice and the failure of schools to submit continuous assessment scores (CAS).
The Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE), Conrad Sackey announced the withheld results on Tuesday during his preliminary analysis of the 2026 exams, noting that these candidates have been entirely excluded from the country’s current pass rate calculations.
To ensure that innocent students are not unjustly penalized for administrative failures, the Ministry has issued a strict ultimatum to defaulting school administrators. Schools that have failed to submit their candidates’ continuous assessment scores have been given until Thursday of this week to submit the outstanding data to WAEC.
According to the Ministry, school heads who fail to meet this deadline without providing a reasonable explanation will face swift disciplinary action.
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Sackey expressed optimism that following due process and the submission of the missing scores, many of the set-aside results will be cleared and officially released. This anticipated clearance is expected to further increase the total number of students passing the 2026 NPSE.
In addition to the withheld results, the Ministry has raised alarms over a significant number of candidates who failed to show up on examination day.
According to the preliminary data, 4,553 candidates were absent for all subjects. This figure consists of 2,328 female candidates and 2,225 male candidates.
The Ministry strongly condemned the high absentee rate, describing it as a massive “waste of resources.”
To prevent a repeat of this issue in future national examinations, the MBSSE announced that heads of schools with disproportionately large numbers of absentee candidates will be subjected to a formal investigation, with necessary punitive actions to follow.
Despite these administrative hurdles, the 2026 NPSE recorded an overall pass rate of 78.2% among the 160,161 candidates who successfully sat for at least one subject and had their results cleared. The cleared results packages are scheduled to be dispatched to schools nationwide by early next week.
