The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has put the historical data of its exams on sale with rates going as much as over a million naira.
WAEC is the first to put its records on sale of the three major similar exams bodies in Nigeria: National Examinations Council and university admission exams body, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board.
The foremost exams body, which conducts secondary school level examinations in West Africa, has a rich collection of exams records dating back decades. It started operations in Nigeria in 1952, running internal and external examinations annually.
The exams council had monopoly of the sector until 1999 when the Nigerian government set up NECO to administer equivalent exams. WAEC said so far at least 50 million candidates have written its examinations in Nigeria since its inception.
– Data on offer
On March 22, the exams body launched a new platform for its exams records, called Edustat. The platform, structured to provide education research and intelligence, is run by Sidmach Technologies Nigeria Limited, which the exams body says is its technical partner.
At the launch of in Lagos, WAEC Nigeria’s head of national office, Patrick Areghan, said the platform would enable government agencies, corporate bodies, schools, researchers, and journalists, among others to access accurate statistics on WAEC examinations and students’ enrolment.
“The researchers as well as you the journalists and development partners can also make use of EDUSTAT platform for necessary statistics as they may need them for one purpose or the other,” he said.
Mr Areghan said the platform has great security and features to protect the privacy of users and candidates. Users are to pay “a token” to access data.
– Rates
The “token” starts from N15,000 and go as much as N1.2 million. The high rates mean many interested reviewers may not have access.
The platform offers exams years, number of subjects passed or failed, and credits made. It offers candidates performance insights, state performance analysis, candidate registration statistics, age distribution, unreleased result analysis, malpractice analysis, school to school comparisons and more.
Results can be disaggregated to individual schools, towns, states, region and nationwide.
To obtain data comparing the performance of all local government areas and all 36 states and Abuja in five subjects for 13 years, the system generates an invoice of N1.2 million.
For five local government areas without states data, the rate starts at N15,000. With one state added, it rises to N400,000 and with more, climbs to N800,000 and N1 million and above.
The data, previously available on request from WAEC offices, were previously hard to obtain. The offer appears to cover only 13 years for now, and has very limited free insights, which comprises mainly what they exams body releases to the public during the release of results each season.
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