Schoolchildren in the Gambia
By Buba Gagigo
In the latest 2024 WAEC exams, female students have surpassed their male counterparts, achieving 51.9% with aggregate scores of 42 and lower, compared to 48.1% for males. The Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education (MoBSE) disclosed these statistics during a recent press conference.
MoBSE’s Director of Performance Evaluation, Andrew Gomez, highlighted the significance of these results, noting a 0.6% increase in performance from previous years, emphasizing its numerical importance despite appearing small.
“In terms of proportion, the males are 48.1 percent with aggregate 42 and lower, while the females are 51.9 percent, almost 52 percent scoring aggregate 42 and lower. Nationally, 50.3 of the students were able to get aggregate 42 and lower, which is an impressive performance. Also, you will see that nationally, this indicator has increased in 2024 by 0.6 percent points compared to 2023 and 2022. You might see 0.6 as small, but numerically it is very significant,” Gomez explained.
Additionally, MoBSE reported that private schools demonstrated superior performance over public schools in this year’s exams. Louis Moses Mendy, Permanent Secretary at MoBSE, underscored the need for sector-wide improvement strategies, particularly in regional disparities.
“The aggregates, we may be scoring higher aggregates but what we want to look at is the proportion of those aggregates across the entire sector. Meaning across the regions. Which region is doing well and which region is lacking behind, and what do we think as a sector we could do to help us improve in those regions,” he said.
Overall, more than twenty thousand students from both public and private schools participated in the exams, with notable achievements including 32 boys and 57 girls scoring aggregate 6.