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All the exams centres across the country in the ongoing Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) are areas declared as high security zones, according to the Deputy Minister of Education in charge of Basic Education, Alex Kyeremeh.

“There should be order and quietness in various exams centres such that the public ought to be banned from moving to and from around the centre. In the past we’ve seen in many occasions; teachers, Chiefs, Assemblymen and town folks walking around exams centres and this is purely a security breach and we’ll not entertain it this time round,” he told Kwaku Owusu Adjei on Anopa Kasapa on Kasapa 102.5 FM.

The Deputy Minister said the move forms part of ways to consolidate the security systems to curb leakage in this year’s BECE.

According to him, having realised a huge challenge with exams malpractices and the excessive leakage in last year’s exams, the Ministry in collaboration with stakeholders has put in place a number of measures to forestall a recurrence of the shortfalls in the exams.

Other measures instituted by authorities, he said included flying the papers to the examination centres and also banning supervisors and invigilators from going into the centres with mobile phones, respectively.

He said they have also engaged the Telcos to monitor various social media platforms for unscrupulous persons who may leak any of the papers on these platforms.

A total of 461,013 candidates from 14,267 public and private Junior High Schools are expected to take part in the week-long external examination to enable them gain admissions into Senior High Schools.

There are 15,695 invigilators supervising the exams nationwide.

WAEC said 57 visually impaired candidates would also take part in the examination.

It said the Council had also secured the services of 1,598 supervisors and 1,515 assistant supervisors.