The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has defended the integrity of the 2026 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results, asserting that its assessment and grading processes strictly adhere to internationally recognized principles of fairness, objectivity, and consistency.
Addressing a press conference in Accra, WAEC Head of Public Affairs John Kapi rejected claims that private school candidates were deliberately awarded lower grades, describing such allegations as baseless and damaging to public confidence.
Guaranteed Anonymity and Quality Controls
To eliminate any potential for regional or institutional bias, WAEC implements comprehensive quality assurance protocols designed to keep candidate identity completely concealed from examiners.
Key measures executed during the 2026 BECE evaluation include:
Inter-Regional Script Swapping: Answer booklets are packaged, coded, and swapped across regions prior to grading.
Randomized Allocation: Scripts are distributed randomly to qualified examiners drawn from both public and private institutions.
Unified Marking Schemes: All examiners are trained on a single, expert-approved marking rubric before evaluation begins.
Understanding the Stanine Grading System
WAEC reiterated that BECE results are determined using the Stanine (Standard Nine) grading system, a statistical method recommended by the Ministry of Education that evaluates a student’s performance relative to the entire national cohort.
Unlike fixed-percentage score systems, the Stanine system accounts for annual fluctuations in paper difficulty and distributes grades across standard performance percentile brackets:
| Grade | Performance Category | Percentile Distribution |
| Grade 1 | Highest Performance | Top 4% |
| Grade 2 | Higher Performance | Next 7% |
| Grade 3 | High Performance | Next 12% |
| Grade 4 | High Average | Next 17% |
| Grade 5 | Average | Middle 20% |
| Grade 6 | Low Average | Next 17% |
| Grade 7 | Low Performance | Next 12% |
| Grade 8 | Lower Performance | Next 7% |
| Grade 9 | Lowest Performance | Bottom 4% |
Channels for Redress and Official Verification
Responding to calls from private school groups regarding result reviews, WAEC urged stakeholders to avoid speculative claims and instead utilize established administrative procedures for candidate inquiries or script remarking.
Head of the Tests Division at WAEC, Ernest Agyapong, noted that the council remains open to remarking requests submitted through official channels, reminding applicants that remarking outcomes may result in grades being upgraded, confirmed, or reduced depending on re-evaluation.
