MONROVIA, Montserrado – Education Ministry officials are said to be in a state of confusion as to the exact amount needed to reprint the West Africa Examination Council Exams following it leakage at the Konola Mission School in Margibi County.

On May 22, 2016, a day before students across the country were scheduled to take the exams, the Ministry cancelled the test after materials were leaked.

The new date set by the Education Ministry for WAEC to administer the secondary schools exams is now June 27 to July 1.

Romelle A. Horton, Deputy Education Minister for Instruction at the Ministry of Information, at a news conference on Tuesday, put the total cost of reprinting, packaging, and shipment of the secondary schools exams at US$300,000.

Horton’s statement contradicts an interview granted to state broadcaster ELBC by the Ministry’s Director for Communications Maxime Bleetahn, who said earlier that the total amount needed to reprint the leaked secondary schools test was US$8,000.

Explaining the circumstances surrounding the leakage of the tests, Horton said the room in which the exams were being kept at the Konola Seven Day Adventist Mission School was still locked but the ceiling appeared to have been broken.

Horton said the culprit had traveled about eight meters through the ceiling to get to the room where the tests were being kept at Konola, despite the presence of “a total of 96 states, WAEC, and school securities.”

The tests were kept in the office of Rebecca G. Yealue, Principal of Konola Seven Day Adventist Mission School.

She said a total of 210 centers across the country were expected to receive the exams, with 225 supervisors and 1,464 proctors selected to administer the tests.

According to Horton, the bags containing the tests had their locks broken and a copy of each of the 9 exams was stolen. She named the nine subject tests as Mathematics, English Language, Economic, Geography, History, Literature-in-English, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.

Horton said WAEC tests have been stored at the Konola campus in recent years with no known incidents. She added that on Thursday this week, a representative from WAEC would travel to Ghana to begin the process of the reprinting of the tests.

She refused to comment on the ongoing investigation surrounding the leakage of the tests to avoid undermining the process.