When it comes to matter of education, the Wise Bird is always passionately concerned and always is having problems with the West Africa Examination Council (WAEC).

The question of withholding results of students is a perennial issue for decade now, and no government has ever been able to handle this issue.

The APC of the 70s, 80s 90s cannot fix the problem, the SLPP of Pa Kabbah cannot, APC of Ernest Koroma could not end it and today the SLPP of Julius Maada Bio cannot still handle the situation of withholding students’ results after sitting their public exams.

The bird is talking here about a democratically elected government but it is not doing anything about the old age situation affecting our students of Sierra Leone, sitting public exams, BECE and WASSCE.

Year-in-year-out results are always withheld, is the Ministry of Education or Examination Council that is having the problem?

This situation is not always made known to the people as to who has the authority to withhold results.

The reason for withholding results has never been explained to the people or even the students for them to know whether they are a victim of exam malpractice or otherwise.

This year, according to records, about 5, 545 candidates were absent for the 2024 BECE examination.

Records also show that, a total of 126, 703 entered for the examination and a total of 1,833 schools sat to the BECE of 2024.

Records further show that 125, 824 inclusive of those absented for all subjects their names were released to the Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education.

The bird was also made to understand that, about 121, 125 were released and 879 BECE results were withheld, but by whom? Only God knows.

Neither the Ministry of Education nor the Exams Council has ever issued out a statement to let the people or students know why withholding their results.

The brave bird cannot give out actual reasons why this situation cannot be handled by the authorities concerned.

Many a time, the bird used to fly from school to school whenever Exams are ongoing but normally does not notice a single abnormality happening in exams centres.

The bird is of the view that, some students took the examination genuinely to get good results to be admitted to university and for those results to be withheld are so frustrating for them.

The most respected animal will say without hesitation that, this is one factor on why we’re having a lot of the drop-outs today in the country.

Results are withheld, but no public statement to support such a action is made; it is a disadvantage caused especially to female students.

This is another reason today when one will get to see a lot of the pregnant young ladies on the streets of Freetown and even in up country.

Some of them there their results have been withheld and they have no means of fighting back for justice.

Can the Ministry of Education or WAEC try to device a sound method to stopping the withholding of students results in public examinations?