Former Education Minister Yaw Osei Adutwum has broken his silence on the controversial decline in the 2025 WASSCE results, blaming the situation on what he describes as the absence of a “clear education formula” in Ghana’s school system.
Speaking during an interview on The Career Trail Season 4 on Joy Learning TV, Dr. Adutwum argued that academic success cannot happen by chance, insisting that the impressive performances recorded in previous years were the result of carefully planned educational strategies and data-driven interventions.
According to him, while serving as Education Minister, his administration relied heavily on detailed reports from the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) to identify weak areas where students consistently struggled — especially in core subjects like Mathematics and Science.
“We would analyse the results at the end of the year using WAEC data,” he explained, adding that the reports helped authorities detect difficult topics and learning gaps affecting students across the country.
Dr. Adutwum further revealed that special interventions were introduced to improve student performance, including targeted teacher training sessions led by examiners and subject experts. According to him, teachers were equipped with better techniques to prepare students for future examinations.
He also disclosed that extra classes played a major role in boosting academic performance, noting that teachers were paid to provide additional lessons beyond regular school hours.
“We used to pay teachers to run extra classes to prepare students better,” he stated, stressing that the additional learning time significantly improved students’ understanding of difficult subjects.
The former minister claimed that his administration also tracked academic performance region by region to identify struggling schools and subjects for immediate intervention.
“This helped us see, for example, that one region may be struggling in chemistry while another is weak in biology, and we could intervene specifically,” he explained.
Dr. Adutwum additionally blamed part of the problem on teacher deployment issues, revealing that in some schools, subjects were being taught by unqualified teachers.
“In some schools, the person teaching mathematics was not even a mathematics major. Once that was corrected, performance improved,” he said.
His comments come amid growing public debate over the sharp drop in the 2025 WASSCE results, particularly in Mathematics, where pass rates reportedly fell dramatically compared to previous years.
Dr. Adutwum warned that some of the gains made in Ghana’s education sector could be lost if support systems and intervention programmes are discontinued.
The remarks have since triggered intense reactions online, with many Ghanaians debating whether policy changes and lack of continuity may be contributing to the recent decline in academic performance nationwide.
