What is WASSCE?

The full meaning stands for West African Secondary School Certificate Examination and in most recent years also known as West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination.

This is an examination service conducted by WAEC which has member countries from within the West African Subregion.

WASSCE also is the examination that every student who reaches his or her final year in senior high school is expected to take to demonstrate and affirm that such a student has successfully completed high school and can be able to continue advanced education either in a university or any tertiary institution.

Is the WASSCE Useful?

Having a WASSCE Certificate is most definitely useful and legal especially within the West African countries that are members of the WAEC.

It is one of the most common attestations in other for a student to further his or her education. The WASSCE certificate is also recognized in many tertiary institutions and universities across the world, though in some cases, a bearer of the certificate may be required to take some fundamental test in addition to gain admission.

Having taken WASSCE is also useful and can become very handy in gaining enlistment into the security services such as the Military, Police, Customs, Prisons, and Fire service, especially here in Ghana.

In a nutshell, WASSCE is particularly useful as it is an acceptable proof of one’s minimum educational qualification.

Is WASSCE different from NOV-DEC?

Technically there is no difference. WASSCE is written by SHS students who have come to the end of their secondary education, and this exam is usually written in the May/June calendar each year. Except in 2020 due to COVID-19.

The exams are taken by both GES accredited public and private senior high schools across the country.

NOV-DEC on the other hand is classified as WASSCE Nov/Dec because it is usually written in November and December (by which time the results may be ready). It is more of a resit examination for students who might need to resit some failed subjects during the May/June WASSCE.

WASSCE Marking Scheme & Grading

According to WAEC, to ensure fairness and uniformity in the making of WASSCE scripts, chief examiners, examiners, and Team leaders are trained to use the approved marking scheme and stick to the standard agreed on.

The scripts are first and foremost marked by qualified examiners and then vetted and supervised by chief examiners and team leaders. (Source: waecgh.orgs/faqs)

WAEC adopts an alphanumeric grading system in classifying how well a student performed in a particular subject and cumulatively in his total registered subjects or course. The table below summarizes this.

WASSCE Result Checker

SHS graduates can check their WASSCE results once it has been released. This can be done over the internet using the WAEC result checking portal and/ or through following an instruction to send a short code through SMS.

To use the online portal, a candidate will have to buy a scratch card or a result checker PIN. This PIN can be easily purchased from an internet café or by dialing short code (*944#) on a mobile phone which has a valid SIM card.

The scratch card can also be purchased from any of the WAEC regional offices or any other accredited outlet. The card is valid for checking the same candidate’s results a maximum of three times.

As of 2020, WAEC has an additional result checker portal which makes it easy and intuitive for candidates to check their results. Visit https://eresults.waecgh.org/ or https://ghana.waecdirect.org/

WASSCE Index Number

This is usually a 10-digit number with two major parts. The school’s code and the candidate's unique number making up the index number.

Every WASSCE candidate after a successful registration is given an index number. This is the number that uniquely identifies each of the hundreds of thousands of students who seats for the examination each year.

According to WAEC, this helps to secure the candidates’ results because the names and date of birth of candidates may be the same and therefore the index numbers generated by WAEC are unique.