Article: Using WASSCE results to promote Accountability in Education in Liberia

The Liberian Education Reform Act of 2011 establishes that the Ministry of Education (MOE) has the power to certify, license, and accredit teachers, school administrators, and support staff. However, it does not provide details on how often schools need to renew their licenses. The Act also gives the Ministry the authority to monitor and ensure quality education in all schools (both public and private). It mandates the MOE to:

·         Conduct inspections to evaluate schools based on established national standards.

·         Monitor teacher performance and ensure they are qualified and meet teaching standards.

·         Evaluate students’ performance in relation to curriculum objectives, using various assessment methods, including national exams such as the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). 

My research of publicly available information over the past two decades revealed that school closures in Liberia have primarily been attributed to unsafe conditions, lack of proper registration, or poor infrastructure. Notably, there were NO documented cases of schools being shut down solely due to poor performance. This suggests that academic performance has not been a primary factor in school closure decisions in Liberia during this period.

While there are challenges associated with the WASSCE (more on that below), I am convinced that ranking schools in Liberia based on their performance on the exam could bring significant benefits to the country’s education system:

1. Improved Accountability– Using WASSCE results to rank schools would promote greater accountability among school administrators, teachers, and students. This system would identify consistently underperforming schools, motivating them to implement necessary reforms. Conversely, high-performing schools would set benchmarks for others to emulate.
2. Informed Policy Decisions– Data from WASSCE rankings could help the Ministry of Education and other stakeholders make evidence-based policy decisions. The government could allocate resources and implement interventions for underperforming schools while incentivizing high-achieving ones. This approach would also highlight specific areas of educational weakness—be it teacher quality, school infrastructure, or curriculum issues—enabling targeted solutions.
3. Motivation for Schools– School rankings can incentivize both public and private schools to improve their teaching methods, curriculum coverage, and student support systems. Knowing they will be ranked against others encourages schools to compete in providing quality education, lifting overall standards.
4. Transparency for Parents and Students– Ranking schools publicly based on their WASSCE results gives parents and students more information when selecting a school. They can choose schools with proven academic performance, ensuring that students attend institutions where they are more likely to succeed academically. It empowers parents to hold schools accountable.
5. Promoting a Culture of Excellence-School rankings could foster a culture of academic excellence. Schools will strive to be ranked among the best, leading to greater efforts in academic planning, teacher effectiveness, and student performance. It could also inspire best practice sharing among institutions, where lower-performing schools learn from higher-ranked ones.

I am not suggesting that the WASSCE is a perfect measure of students’ performance. However, it does provide a means to measure a school’s academic temperature and can be augmented using additional measures such as student attendance, school infrastructure, and student satisfaction surveys. 

For the ranking of schools to be effective, the WASSCE must be credible. Over the last 5 years, there have been instances of cheating on the exam (as reported in the Frontpage Africa newspaper). For instance, in 2022, Dale Gbotoe, head of the West African Examination Council (WAEC) Liberia, raised concerns about school administrators facilitating exam cheating. Despite being entrusted with exam supervision, these administrators were caught engaging in malpractice, particularly in Montserrado County, which reported the highest number of incidents. Furthermore, in 2023, students at multiple schools were found with photocopied exam materials during the WASSCE. This situation suggests that the Government of Liberia should take one of two actions: implement stricter accountability measures for WAEC authorities in their supervision of exam administration or initiate leadership changes within the WAEC to address the ongoing issues of exam malpractice.

About the Author

Chris Tokpah is the Associate Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness at Delaware County Community College in PA. He holds a Ph.D. in Program Evaluation and Measurement, an MBA (with an emphasis in Management Information Systems), and a B.Sc. in Mathematics. He is an Adjunct Professor of Research Methods and Statistics (Ph.D. program) at Delaware Valley University and an independent consultant. He has participated in, or supervised baseline studies and evaluations sponsored by the World Bank, IDA, Geneva Global, USAID, and AfDB. His email address is ctokpah@kent.edu.