Teacher retraining needed to tackle social media jargon in WASSCE – Adutwum

Former Education Minister Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum has advocated for enhanced teacher professional development in response to concerns over students utilizing social media language and jargon in the upcoming 2026 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). Speaking on JoyNews’ The Pulse, Dr Adutwum emphasized that this issue should not be viewed as a crisis but rather as an opportunity to strengthen teacher training and academic support systems within schools.

He highlighted the importance of equipping teachers through ongoing professional development and collaborative learning communities to address emerging challenges affecting students’ academic performance. Dr Adutwum stressed that teachers should be able to identify and correct inappropriate expressions in academic work, explaining the potential consequences to students.

He proposed that such issues should ideally be detected and addressed during classroom assessments and internal examinations rather than in the final WASSCE scripts. Additionally, Dr Adutwum called for stronger academic counseling and student guidance to help students differentiate between informal communication and the formal language necessary for successful performance in external examinations.

He believes that a multifaceted approach involving teacher retraining, classroom monitoring, and student guidance can effectively mitigate the impact of social media jargon on students’ examination performance.