‎WAEC vows full switch to CBT for WASSCE by 2026

The West African Examinations Council has reaffirmed its plan to migrate the West African Senior School Certificate Examination to a fully computer-based testing format by 2026.
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‎Head of WAEC’s National Office, Dr. Amos Dangut, gave the assurance on Tuesday during a sensitisation meeting with members of the National Assembly Committee on Education in Abuja.
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‎He said the transition, which began with private candidates in 2024, has already made “significant progress” and will be scaled up nationwide ahead of next year’s deadline.
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‎“We have conducted five exams already, one for private candidates and one for school candidates, and by 2026, deployment will be massive,” he said.
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‎Speaking on concerns about infrastructure and cyber risks, Dangut assured stakeholders that WAEC had successfully conducted exams in hard-to-reach areas without disruptions.
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‎He explained that candidates’ performances in CBT had been “empirically better” than in paper-based tests.
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‎PUNCH Online on the 9th of January 2024, reports that the examination body in 2024 dumped the paper and pencil test model and adopted the computer-based test mode for the conduct of the Senior School Certificate Examination for private candidates.
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‎WAEC seeks to build on the previous implementation to include general school candidates.
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‎Also, on 22nd July 2025, the Federal Government revealed that privately-owned Computer-Based Test centres and others belonging to public institutions would be fully deployed in the conduct of the school-based Senior School Certificate Examination by next year.
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‎Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, speaking on the issues, said, “WAEC and NECO exams are school-based exams being conducted at their schools. No, we will move away from that.
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‎“It is going to be like (the way) JAMB exams are being conducted at CBT centres. We have thousands of CBT centres across the nation.
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‎“Those are the centres that we are going to use. It’s not the case that students do not have the facilities. Schools do not have the facilitie