It was indicated in the September edition of the Africa Supreme magazine that the October edition will form Part 2 of the series on the processes for assuring education quality through examinations. Part 2 of the series, it was indicated, would consist of issues on grades clean-up processes carried out by examination boards, and issues on examination reports to schools.

It was realized later, however, that issues on examinations malpractices should come before issues on examination results clean-up and issues on school reports. This article therefore deals with examination malpractices, while issues on examination grades clean-up and schools reports on examination results will appear in the November edition of the magazine.

Examination malpractices can be considered from internal sources arising from examination candidates themselves and from external sources. The external sources involve persons and agents outside the examinations system whose actions affect the reliability of examination results of candidates. 

Internal examinations malpractices include impersonation, written question answers hidden on candidates, collusion, using an external helper seated outside the examination hall, using monetary means to influence examination security personnel. 

Impersonation is one of the commonest forms of examination malpractices in which the candidate is replaced by another person recruited or bribed to come and write the examination in place of the registered candidate. The impersonator arrives at the examination hall with all the required particulars. Sometimes the impersonator is found out before the start of the examination and sometimes during the examination writing process. In a number of cases, the impersonator is never found out and in which case the registered candidate would obtain grades and certificate based on misdemeanor. 

A way out of this malpractice will be to require that every registered candidate should affix a recent photograph on their examination registration documents. Every candidate should then be required to show a copy of their documents and photograph before entry into the examination hall. Both the examinations supervisor and the invigilators should be required to certify the correctness of the documents and photograph presented by each examination candidate.

Secondly, a photograph of the candidate and their registration number must also be displayed on the writing desk of each candidate to help invigilators and supervisors to constantly compare the picture of the candidate with the actual person writing the examination. 

Either out of speculation or by circumstances of having knowledge of some questions on a leaked examination paper, some candidates arrive at the examination hall with written answers to some of the examination questions hidden on their person: in their shoes; in their pockets; in the draft section of their phones, or in a mathematical set, if it is the mathematics examination day.

This type of misdemeanor can be detected through checks conducted on the person of each candidate at the entrance gate to the examination hall: a body search by emptying the pockets; removing their shoes for examination; forbidding candidates from taking their phones into the examination hall; and thorough search of mathematical sets.

Such body-searches should be conducted by trained personnel. Female candidates should be searched by female security personnel and male candidate searched by male security personnel. Where the examination board cannot afford to pay external security personnel for this type of body search, the board should get their own security staff trained by an existing, organised, trained security personnel such as the police.

Collusion occurs in three main instances. It occurs in cases where some candidates provide the same answer, word for word, to some examination questions. This happens where some candidates have had foreknowledge of the examination question papers, or by some speculation have come together to spot questions that may appear in the examination and have therefore studied together and written up prepared answers. 

Being able to spot examination questions that may appear in the certificate examination papers used to happen in former examination paper setting process in which a chief examiner, with a team of two or three examiners, sets the question papers, sometimes adding some previous examination questions that probably were not answered well enough by candidates at the time when such questions were used. Under the current system of paper setting where the computer is programmed to select examination questions from a pool of hundreds or thousands of questions, the probability of a previous question being repeated in another examination is infinitesimally small. 

In the second instance, collusion occurs where two or more candidates are able to pass written answers to each other during the course of the examination. This happens in cases where the examination invigilation and supervision are both very weak. 

In the third instance, collusion occurs where candidates are able to whisper answers to each other, or are able to allow their colleagues sitting closer to them to copy their answers directly. This case occurs where candidates from the same school are allowed to sit together in the same sector of the examination hall. 

To prevent collusion in certificate examinations, the seating arrangements should be such that candidates from the same school do not sit in the same section of the examination hall. Rather, candidates should be seated in a planned arrangement system in which candidates seated behind, in front and on each side of Candidate A for example, all come from different schools. This seating arrangement system will entail a lot of work planned work on the part of the examination body. 

Where this is not possible, a seating  arrangement of wider spacing of candidates that will  make it impossible for candidates to whisper or copy from each other, without the invigilators being able to detect such infractions, should be adopted.

In a few instances available, candidates for a certificate examination would hire an older, knowledgeable person as their helper or “consultant.” This consultant will be seated in the bathroom or in the area of the toilet facility in the vicinity of the examination hall. Whenever, a candidate needed help in writing an answer to a question, he or she would request the invigilator to be allowed to go to the urinal. The candidate would straightaway go the consultant 

seated in the urinal area, as already described. The consultant would provide the required answer in a few minutes for the candidate to return to the examination hall.  

To be able to forestall this kind of malpractice, examination bodies must train their supervisors and invigilators to realize that whenever candidates begin to make frequent requests to go to the bathrooms, there is the probability that they would actually be going to see their consultant. some where in the bathroom area. Supervisors and invigilators should therefore quickly go out to check the bathroom area for possibilities of a consultant seated and actively providing answers to their client candidates.

Certificate examinations are usually high-stakes examinations. Candidates, parents and school teachers are in most cases, very anxious that their candidates should do well in such examinations. There was a case, several years ago in Italy where the police providing security for an on-going certificate examination noticed a suspicious packed mini-size caravan in the vicinity of the examination hall. The police went over to the caravan to find a man providing answers through a microphone. He was providing question answers to his son in the examination hall. On further check, the police found the son with a microphone in his shirt through which he could communicate with his father.

There was a case, which is probably a frequent practice in some schools in Ghana, where the teachers of a school would collect money to give to the security personnel hired by the examination body. The purpose is to influence the security personnel to turn a blind eye to allow the candidates of their school to help each other in answering examination questions.

Obviously, the security personnel in such cases, are immoral, disgusting and have further not been trained by the examination body. But such practices occur because of the anxiety of teachers, parents and candidates themselves to do well in such examinations.

External examination malpractices include examination leakage brought about by persons within and outside the education system; fake certificate examination question papers and using unsafe places for storage of examination question bags pending date and time of scheduled examinations.

Leakage of examination question papers may be attributed to unscrupulous persons in the education system of the country, in the national or regional examination body and sometimes by persons outside the education system. Persons outside the education and examinations board act of agents who go around heads of schools asking if they would like to have question papers ahead of time for their students, for a fee. Such persons generally would have contacts within the offices of the examination board; contacts connected with the preparation of examination papers and can therefore have access to live examination papers.

Depending on the number of heads of schools who indicate their willingness to obtain question papers ahead of time and secondly, their ability to pay the price the agent asks for, the agent will then set in motion the process of obtaining the question papers through their contacts. 

Examination leakage, as already indicated in the September edition of Africa Supreme magazine, is currently almost a thing of the past due to the present system of computerized examination paper setting process. The process, as indicated in the September edition and also indicated in the section on “collusion” in this article, significantly reduces the probability of any examination item or question appearing twice within a period of five or more years. Besides this, the computerized paper setting process is such that in case of examination leakage, the examination board will be capable of setting new question papers within  a couple of days; cancel administration of the leaked examination and reschedule the examination with parallel forms of the leaked examination question papers. It is troublesome, but can be done hurriedly and efficiently. 

Only one incident on fake examination leakage is known to the writer of this article. The incident occurred in Nigeria several years ago and was captured in a report on sources of leakage in the examinations of the West African Examination Council (WAEC); written for  WAEC in 1979, by a committee chaired by the Late Professor Nicholas Anim, with membership from The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana and Nigeria. An entrepreneur had printed examination question papers bearing the logo of WAEC with all the directions and all attributes of WAEC examination papers. He then went round selling his examination papers as leaked WAEC examination papers. WAEC had the case investigated and came to the conclusion that the “leaked question papers” was a clear case of deception. The writer has no idea whether the case ever went to court.

Locked examination questions bags are generally kept for safety in designated schools and police stations pending collection by examination supervisors for administration on daily basis. 

In one case, some locked question bags were kept in a rural police cell in which there was a suspected criminal.

To spite the police, the suspect eased himself on the floor of the cell and bolted from the cell in the night. The story would probably have been different if the suspected criminal had known the value of the contents of the bags in the cell. This incident is just a note to examination boards and councils to make sure that storage places for question bags have the proper security features to be able to provide the necessary and vital safety for examination bags.

The content of this article is based on personal experiences of the writer and there is therefore, unfortunately, no additional sources provided for the reader.