The Ghana Education Service has announced that Ghana is moving away from the Ghana-only WASSCE introduced under the Akufo-Addo administration.
According to the GES, Ghana will participate in the international WASSCE, written by all West African member countries, in May/June 2026.
The GES news comes on the back of WAEC releasing the 2025 WASSCE results.
WAEC’s provisional results for the 2025 WASSCE showed that more than half of the candidates, “220,008 out of 461,736, failed Core Mathematics, marking the worst performance in the subject in seven years.
Also, “Only 48.73% of candidates attained grades A1 to C6 in 2025. This represents a massive collapse from the 66.86% achieved in 2024. A total of 209,068 candidates passed with A1-C6, but 114,872 candidates (26.77%) failed the subject outright with an F9 grade.
A total of 1,021 schools registered candidates for the examination, representing a slight 0.24% increase over 2024, while 5,821 candidates (1.26%) were absent”.
Additionally, 131,097 students (30.27%) failed English Language, 161,606 students (39.87%) failed Integrated Science, and 196727 students (44%) failed Social Studies.
Meanwhile, the Ghana Education Service (GES) has said the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results accurately reflect student performance.
According to the Ghana Education Service (GES), the claims by Dr Yaw Osei-Adutwum, the past Education Minister, attributing the failure to unsupportive management practices are baseless.
They revealed that the GES has cancelled any allowances due to teachers, as claimed by Dr Yaw Osei-Adutwum.
In a statement on Monday, 1 December 2025, the GES stated, “Management takes note of attempts by Dr Yaw Osei-Adutwum, immediate past Minister of Education, to attribute the performance of students in the 2025 WASSCE to unsupportive management practices of GES.
It is not true that the GES has cancelled any allowances due to teachers, as claimed by Dr Adutwum in his engagement with some media houses. Indeed, the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department (CAGD) has publicly clarified reasons for the non-payment of the November allowances for teachers”.
It further added, “GES urges the public to disregard the statements made by the former Minister, Dr Adutwum, regarding the 2025 WASSCE results and treat them as an attempt to shift focus from his shortcomings in managing the examination process.
Management of GES views the 2025 WASSCE results as a true reflection of the academic performance of the candidates. The outcome is a credible representation of students’ abilities”.
Meanwhile, Executive Director of the Institute for Education Studies (IFEST), Dr Peter Anti Partey, has called for a scientific approach to address the decline in 2025 WASSCE performance.
Speaking on Morning Starr, he stated, “The national averages… are just an aggregation of individual school performances. If some people perform poorly, they drive the overall average down.”
“If we leave it to the politicians, I don’t think those kinds of decisions would help my child or help your child… Our individual kids… will not benefit from that discussion.”
He added, “People might want to talk about the issue of everything… These are perceptual reasons. They are not scientifically founded because we are not undertaking any rigorous exercise to determine the linkage between these variables and the performance”.
“We should ask the Ministry of Education to let us know which schools are pulling the national averages down and what interventions the ministry is ready to provide for these schools,” he added.
See the post below:
Ghana moves from Ghana-only WASSCE to international WASSCE for May/June 2026… #GHOneNews #EIBNetwork #GHOneTV #NewsAlert pic.twitter.com/oqOaxcqc1a
— GHOne TV (@ghonetv) December 1, 2025