LAGOS, Nigeria — The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has revised the 2025 West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results, raising the overall credit pass rate from 38.32 per cent to 62.96 per cent after identifying a technical error in the scoring process.
The council had initially announced a sharp drop in performance compared to 2024, reporting that only 754,545 of the 1,969,313 candidates who took the exam across 23,554 schools achieved a minimum of five credits, including English Language and Mathematics.
Following widespread public criticism over the mass failure, WAEC said it discovered that the grading of “serialised papers” — a recent innovation — had been compromised.
The error, it explained, stemmed from the use of an incorrect serialised code file during the printing of English Language Objective Tests (Paper 3), causing scripts to be scored with the wrong answer keys.
According to WAEC, schools that used the computer-based mode for the examination were unaffected.
“The observable decline in the performance of candidates earlier announced was partly traceable to this absurd situation,” the council said.
“The council sincerely apologises for this imbroglio and deeply regrets the emotional and mental dismay it might have caused the affected candidates and all stakeholders.”
The revised figures show that 1,239,884 candidates — representing 62.96 per cent — now have credits or higher in at least five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.
