WAEC Releases Corrected 2025 WASSCE Results, Apologises for Grading Mistake: The West African Examinations Council (WAEC), Nigeria, has released the revised results for the 2025 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) for school candidates.
This comes after the council discovered serious grading errors that had a huge impact on candidates’ performance statistics.
What Happened?
Speaking at a press briefing on Friday at WAEC’s national office in Yaba, Lagos, the Head of WAEC Nigeria, Dr. Amos Dangut, admitted to the error and offered an unreserved apology.
According to him, the issue came from a new security measure called paper serialisation, already used by another national exam body. Unfortunately, in the case of the English Language Objective Test (Paper 3), the wrong serialised code file was assigned, which meant the paper was marked with incorrect answer keys.
Other subjects that used serialisation included Mathematics, Biology, and Economics, but the marking error mainly affected English Language Objective.
“Candidates who wrote the exams using the computer-based mode were not affected,” Dangut confirmed.
The Updated 2025 WASSCE Performance
With the error corrected, WAEC says:
1,794,821 candidates (91.14%) scored credit and above in at least five subjects (with or without English and Maths).
1,239,884 candidates (62.96%) obtained five credits including English and Mathematics — a big jump from the earlier 38.32% that was announced before the review.
Female candidates made up 53.05%, while male candidates accounted for 46.95%.
However, this performance is still 9.16% lower than the 72.12% recorded in 2024.
Number of Candidates and Special Needs Support
A total of 1,969,313 candidates sat for the 2025 WASSCE, including those from schools in Benin Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, and Equatorial Guinea that use the Nigerian curriculum.
WAEC also catered for 12,178 special needs candidates, including:
- 112 visually impaired
- 615 hearing impaired
- 37 physically challenged
- 52 spastic/mentally challenged
All their results have been processed and released.
Pending, Withheld, and Malpractice Cases
Fully processed results: 1,763,470 candidates (89.55%)
Pending results: 205,916 candidates (10.45%) due to technical issues — WAEC says they will be released soon.
Withheld results: 191,053 candidates (9.7%) over suspected exam malpractice, which is lower than the 11.92% recorded in 2024.
Investigations are ongoing, and affected candidates can lodge complaints at waecinternational.org/complaints.
How to Check Your WAEC 2025 Results
Candidates can:
1. Visit www.waecdirect.org to check their results.
2. Apply for their digital certificate, available within 48 hours after verification.
3. Expect the hard copy certificate within 90 days.
Important: Candidates sponsored by indebted state governments will not be able to access their results until the states settle their debts with WAEC.
WAEC’s Apology and Assurance
Dr. Dangut apologised on behalf of the council to students, parents, teachers, and all education stakeholders, saying:
“We know how distressing this was for everyone involved. This is a very difficult and embarrassing moment for us, but we are committed to ensuring it never happens again.”
WAEC also thanked the Federal Government, the Minister of Education, and state education bodies for their support during the review process.
Final Note for Candidates
If you wrote the 2025 WASSCE, check your revised results immediately to confirm your new grades. If you
have pending results or malpractice issues, follow the official channels to resolve them.
