This year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) for School Candidates (BECE-SC) has been slated for June 9 to 16, 2025, with the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE-SC) taking place from August 4 to September 19, 2025.

The BECE schedule marks a significant return to the pre-COVID era after a four-year hiatus.

Prior to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and the subsequent closure of schools, the BECE-SC was written in June, while results were released in August. 

In the interim, first-year senior high school (SHS) students reported to school around the first week of October.

However, the WASSCE-SC remains the Ghana Only Version as the other member countries of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) still follow the status quo in May-June.  

Development

Last year, final-year junior high school (JHS) students wrote the BECE-SC from July 8 to 15, 2024, while the Ghana Only Version of the WASSCE-SC was held from August 5 to September 20, 2024.

In 2019, the BECE was written from June 10-14, 2019, while in 2020, the examination scheduled for June 16 to 19, 2020, was rescheduled due to the closure of schools on March 15, 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The BECE-SC was subsequently written from September 14 to 18, 2020, following the reopening of schools for 531,705 final-year students.

In 2021, the BECE School Candidates sat the examination from November 15 to 19, while the next examination took place from October 17 to 21, 2022.

In 2023, the BECE was held from August 7 to August 11, 2023.

A circular dated January 24, 2025, and signed by the Director, Schools and Instructions Division of the GES, Prince Charles Agyemang-Duah, announced the dates for the 2025 BECE-SC and the WASSCE-SC, indicating that WAEC would communicate the period for the registration of candidates for the respective examinations to the heads of schools in due course.

“By this letter, regional directors of education are requested to communicate this information to metropolitan, municipal and district directors of education to inform all heads of basic and

SHSs to take note and prepare the candidates for the examination accordingly,” it said.

Meanwhile, the Executive Director of the Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, has welcomed the reversal of the BECE-SC to the pre-COVID era.

Funding

He said with the development, it was expected that the government would make adequate funding available at the right time to mark the scripts and make the results available in real time for secondary school admissions to take place by September.

He said once that was done, the country would have been able to reset the academic calendar in line with its pre-COVID system.

“The most important thing is that we can only sustain this change made and move to the original academic calendar if the government makes good its obligation to ensure that the BECE is financed timely so that there is no delay in the marking and the delivery of BECE results,” he said.

In the case of the WASSCE-SC, he said the plan to reset with that of other West African countries was still in place.

“So, the plan is still being followed, the plan that GES has put in place,” he emphasised.

Ghana only

The Ghana-Only WASSCE-SC is taking place for the fourth successive time because the other four-member countries of WAEC — Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone and The Gambia — have returned to the May-June calendar for WASSCE School candidates.