Girls that score five credits including English and Math are consistently beating boys in the major WASCE examinations.
Marvelous Nigerian school girls have shown this gender strength over the past five years.
This trend in girl child gender triumph has been consistent between 2018 and 2020 when the West African Examination Council (WAEC) released the statistics.
The numbers are remarkable because more boys than girls write the examination each year.
This year, 2021, WAEC however failed to disclose the gender performance.
Nevertheless, the trend over the past three years is as follows:
| YEAR | 5-CREDITS | BOYS | GIRLS |
| 2018 | 786,016 | 49.57% | 50.43% |
| 2019 | 1,020,519 | 49.77% | 50.23% |
| 2020 | 1,003,668 | 49.53% | 50.47% |
The senior West African School Certificate Examination (WASCE) is conducted by the West African Examination Council.
It is an internationally recognized exit examination for high school students, with a standard accepted worldwide for university admissions.
There is an overall performance improvement across board in recent years.
Except for 2018 when the percentage of students with the required 5-credit pass (including math and English) fell by 9 points, there has been a steady improvement.
WAEC reverts to June-July Calendar in 2022
WAEC will revert to the June-July schedule for writing the examination in 2022, head of WAEC National Office, Patrick Areghan says.
He disclosed on Monday that Nigeria’s education authorities requested for the arrangement.
The worldwide pandemic, Covid-19 caught the world flatfooted in February 2020, leading to disruption of the schedule.
Students eventually wrote the 2020 WASCE in August and the results were released in November same year.
The 2021 examination eventually followed a similar pattern as it was written between August and September.
The examination body also served notice that it will increase the examination fees for WASCE candidates in 2022.
This increase affects private candidates with registration fee jacked up to N18,000.00 from N13,950.00
Coming competition for university spaces
These disruptions also affected the university calendar, as freshmen are still being accepted in some schools.
Over 1.20 million candidates made the cut and have now lined up for limited spaces in the 2021-2022 school session.
Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says 1.42million candidates are seeking university admission in 2021. The number that wrote WASCE this year is slightly higher at 1.56m.
However, less than 12% of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) candidates scored 200 points and above in the common entrance exam.
Many universities lowered their cut-off marks for admission, in acknowledgement of the poor results.
The results, however, makes it easier for students who do well in post-UTME university assessments to gain admission this year.
Girls consistently beating boys in WASC Exams
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