Mass 2020 WASSCE Failure… How Laziness & Procrastination Resulted In Mal-Performance

By Amin Kef Sesay

With the dust slowly settling down after the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the Ministry of Education published the results of this year’s schools WASSCE, and the disclosure that barely 5 percent of candidates had the university entry requirements of five subjects, including English and Mathematics, many academics are beginning to re-examine the reasons for this failure.

Interviews conducted by the Calabash Newspaper across the country, which included interviews with parents, teachers, students and school authorities, discovered that insinuations that WAEC has not been friendly to Sierra Leonean students seemed unfounded, and the following were discovered to be contributory factors to this malaise.

However, when you ask students what they did or did not do to make them fail, the response generally was, “the lecturer failed me”, the exam was too hard,” “we were not taught”. This and many more reasons are excuses students gave. However, the common causes of failure are interrelated and consequential. One, there is a lot of activities going on within the school environment which, if not well controlled and carefully chosen, are capable of taking up the entire time of an undisciplined student.

In anything we undertake to do, failure starts with the self. A combination of your knowledge of what leads to failure and how to avoid it should give you that desired leap of academic excellence.

1. LAZINESS

This is one of the major reasons for failure. When you are lazy as a student, you will find it hard to get up to do important things like reading the notes given by the teacher, doing assignments and carrying out some research to expand your knowledge about that particular subject. Some students even find it hard to attend classes.

2. PROCRASTINATING

If you have the habit of waiting until the dying minute to complete your assignments, you will always end up with little or no quality. This usually results in poor performance and grades. When you keep shifting the time to read forward, until there’s absolutely no time to read again, it will lead to rush hour preparations.  Plan your time well. Do your assignments early enough, read as much as you can, carry out appropriate research and write your essays almost immediately.

3. OVERCONFIDENCE

As much as confidence is good, a student must be very careful not to cross the thin line from confidence to overconfidence.

Overconfident students sometimes think they know more than their lecturers. Just because you are a brilliant student doesn’t mean you will notice every twist to a particular question or topic.

The opposite of this is low self-esteem. These students don’t believe in themselves at all. Such students already have a mindset towards a particular subject, and thus, they close their minds to whatever important information will be given on the topic or subject. If you have low self-esteem, try to believe that you can understand whatever you are taught. Be open-minded to new things.

4. BAD READING HABITS

If you don’t know how to study or what works for you, it’s simply because you haven’t taken sufficient time to study yourself and your capacity. Some students read at wrong times and in the wrong way. Self-discipline and practice makes perfect. Try as much as possible to avoid a disorganized reading habit. Start reading early enough to get used to it and recall better.

5. LACK OF INTEREST

Another reason for the failure of students is a total lack of interest in a particular subject or topic due to being lackadaisical and unconcerned. There is absolutely no way a student who lacks interest in a particular course will pass the examinations.

6. A WRONG MINDSET

If a student has a mindset of always failing, there is almost no way he will succeed in that examination. Why? He has given up before writing it. Have an incredible mindset that believes that no matter what the circumstances around you may be, you will pass an examination and succeed.