WAEC explains WASSCE 2025 performance drop, corrects pass rate after glitch

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has revised the 2025 West Africa Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) credit pass rate upward to 62.96 percent from the initially reported 38.32 percent.

Initially, WAEC had announced a sharp decline in performance compared to 2024, revealing that out of 1,969,313 candidates from 23,554 schools, only 754,545 candidates (38.32%) achieved at least five credits including core subjects like English and Mathematics.

Following widespread public concern, WAEC identified technical issues in the scoring process.

The problem stemmed from an error in the grading of “serialised papers,” a recent innovation, where a wrong serialised code file was used during the printing of the English Language Objective Tests (Paper 3), leading to incorrect scoring.

Notably, candidates who took the exam through the computer-based mode were not affected.

Also Read: 2025 WASSCE results are out — WAEC tells candidates to check portal

WAEC acknowledged that this error partly explained the observed decline in results and issued a sincere apology for the confusion and distress caused to candidates and stakeholders.

After review, WAEC’s updated analysis now shows that 1,239,884 candidates (62.96%) attained credits and above in a minimum of five subjects including English Language and Mathematics.

Daily Watch Nigeria.