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Yesterday, I described a quiet transaction taking place in examination halls across this nation. The WASSCE has become a phone exam. Question papers are leaked. Answers are sold. Certificates are purchased, not earned. And the silence around this crisis is slowly killing our educational system.
Today, I want to talk about what we do about it.
The solutions are not mysterious. They are not futuristic. They are not beyond our capacity. They are merely difficult, because they require us to confront uncomfortable truths, to enforce consequences that will make powerful people uncomfortable, and to demand integrity from institutions that have grown accustomed to operating without it.
Here is a four-step plan to take back our examinations and our children’s future.
STEP ONE
Criminalize Organized Malpractice
Let us be clear about what we are dealing with. The phone exam is not a few students whispering answers in the back row. It is an organized, multi-level industry. It involves teachers who sell answers, invigilators who look the other way, school proprietors who facilitate the system, and external syndicates who operate across multiple schools and districts.
This is fraud. It should be treated as fraud.
Teachers, invigilators, and school proprietors who facilitate organized cheating should face prosecution, not reassignment. The Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education has the authority to investigate and recommend prosecution. WAEC has the authority to ban schools and individuals from participating in its examinations. What is missing is the consistent, visible enforcement of these consequences.
When a teacher is arrested and prosecuted for selling examination answers, other teachers will take notice. When a school is shut down for institutionalized malpractice, other schools will clean up their act. The message must be clear: selling answers is not a minor infraction. It is a crime against every honest student in this country.
STEP TWO
Deploy Technology That Makes Cheating Impossible
The phone exam exploits a technological gap. Students have smartphones. Examination halls have no signal jamming, no metal detectors, and no randomized question papers that cannot be photographed and distributed in advance.
These are not futuristic solutions. Signal jamming technology is deployed in examination halls in countries around the world. Metal detectors at entrances are standard practice in many jurisdictions. Randomized question papers, where each candidate receives a unique set of questions are used in professional certification examinations globally.
WAEC has already begun introducing some technological measures, including biometric verification of candidates. But the syndicates adapt faster than the regulators. The investment in examination security must match the sophistication of the networks that are trying to defeat it. This requires funding, and funding requires political will. Our government and our international partners must decide that examination integrity is worth the cost.
STEP THREE
Reduce the Stakes of a Single Examination
Part of what fuels the phone exam is the desperation that comes from knowing that a single set of results will determine the rest of a student’s life. The WASSCE is a high-stakes, all-or-nothing examination. Pass, and the doors of the university open. Fail, and those doors slam shut. The pressure to pass at any cost is immense.
One way to reduce that pressure is to introduce multiple assessment pathways. Continuous assessment, where coursework, projects, and internal examinations contribute to the final grade would reduce the weight placed on a single examination. Students who know that their performance across the year matters as much as their performance on one day are less likely to risk everything on a phone in the examination hall.
Another approach is to offer alternative qualifications. Technical and vocational pathways should be accredited and celebrated, not stigmatized. A student who is not academically inclined should have a credible, respected alternative that leads to employment, not a dead end that makes the WASSCE feel like their only shot at a future.
STEP FOUR
Tell the Truth from Every Platform We Have
This cannot only be a government problem. It is a community problem. It is a church problem. It is a parent-teacher association problem. The phone exam persists because it is surrounded by a culture of silence, and breaking that silence requires every voice that can speak to do so.
Parents must be told the truth: paying for the phone exam is not helping your child. It is crippling them. The certificate they receive will open no doors if the knowledge behind it is empty. You are not buying them a future. You are buying them a lie.
Churches and mosques must stop celebrating students with fraudulent results. When a young person is called to the front of the congregation and applauded for “excellent WASSCE results” that were purchased on WhatsApp, the church is not honouring achievement. It is rewarding deception. Faith leaders must find the courage to say: we celebrate integrity, not just results.
Teachers who refuse to participate in malpractice must be protected and publicly honoured. Students who choose honesty over cheating must know that their integrity is seen and valued. The culture will not change until the incentives change, and the incentives will not change until we start rewarding what is right instead of what is easy.
Every year we delay is another cohort of students who leave secondary school with certificates they cannot read. It is another wave of graduates entering the job market with credentials that mean nothing. It is another group of honest students who learn the brutal lesson that integrity does not pay.
The phone exam is not a victimless crime. Its victims are the honest student, the dedicated teacher, the deceived parent, the frustrated employer, the patient treated by an unqualified nurse, the bridge designed by an unqualified engineer, and the nation that will one day inherit a workforce that looks qualified on paper and is empty in practice.
We can stop this. But only if we stop pretending it is not happening. Only if we stop treating examination malpractice as a minor embarrassment and start treating it as what it is: an existential threat to the future of Sierra Leone.
The phone exam has sold our children’s futures to the highest bidder. It is time to buy them back.
Christopher Ahmed Kamara is an Internationally published author, Founder of Transcend Narrative SL, and Board Chairman of Winners’ Chapel International, Calaba Town. His forthcoming book, The Next Graduate: Choosing Skills That Hire When Degrees Don’t, examines the crisis in Sierra Leone’s education-to-employment pipeline and will be available on Amazon and major platforms.
