2025 WASSCE results declined due to lack of education formula — Ex-Education Minister Dr Osei Adutwum

Former Education Minister and MP for Bosomtwe, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, says the drop in the 2025 WASSCE results happened because there is no clear and structured “education formula” guiding the system.

Speaking on The Career Trail Season 4 on Joy Learning TV, he argued that lasting improvement in education needs a careful approach backed by data, steady action and ongoing academic support.
“I believe that for you to succeed in anything, whether as a businessman or in public service, you need a formula. When you apply the formula, you may not get 100 per cent, but you will get 80 or 90 per cent. Things go wrong when there is no formula,” he noted.

Dr Adutwum explained that when he was Education Minister, his reforms were guided by structured data analysis from WAEC to find learning gaps in the system. He said WAEC reports were reviewed every year to see where students always struggled, especially in maths and science.

“We would analyse the results at the end of the year using WAEC data. Their reports would show the difficult areas, and we could see where students were weak,” he indicated. According to him, the findings were used not just to find problems but also to train teachers through targeted actions involving examiners and subject experts.

“Once we identified the gaps, we brought in examiners to train teachers so that when similar questions came again, students would be better prepared,” he explained. He further revealed that extra teaching time was introduced as part of the reforms, including structured extra classes after normal school hours.

“We used to pay teachers to run extra classes to prepare students better. That additional time made a difference in strengthening understanding,” he disclosed. Dr Adutwum added that tracking performance by region also formed part of the reform strategy. This allowed help to be tailored to specific needs.

He noted that education data was broken down by region and subject to find underperforming areas and deal with them directly.

“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 said.

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