The Gambia’s 2026 WASSCE results show improvement, but the country’s university-entry performance remains poor.
The West African Examinations Council said 20,610 candidates from 170 senior secondary schools registered, up 1.79 per cent from 20,248 in 2025. Of 19,605 candidates whose records were complete, 1,556, or 7.94 per cent, earned at least five credits including English Language and Mathematics.
That is better than 2025, when 961 of 18,819 candidates with complete records, or 5.11 per cent, reached the same benchmark. The increase of 2.83 percentage points is encouraging, yet more than nine in ten candidates still failed to meet this widely used threshold.
Girls produced more successful candidates: 907, compared with 649 boys. However, girls also formed nearly two-thirds of the entry—13,070 against 7,540 boys. Measured against total registrations, about 6.9 per cent of girls reached the benchmark, versus roughly 8.6 per cent of boys. Thus, females led numerically, but males performed better proportionally. The pattern resembles 2025, when females supplied 55.78 per cent of successful candidates despite representing 62.44 per cent of entrants.
Regionally, The Gambia trails sharply behind Nigeria, where 61.54 per cent of 1.95 million candidates obtained five credits including English and Mathematics in 2026. Nigeria’s result slipped from 62.96 per cent in 2025, but remained almost eight times The Gambia’s rate. A complete West African ranking is premature because comparable 2026 national statistics for Ghana, Sierra Leone and Liberia were not all published at the time of reporting.
WAEC cautioned that 994 Gambian records remained incomplete, meaning the final rate may change. Results for 98 candidates from 13 schools were withheld over suspected malpractice.
The verdict is therefore mixed: progress over 2025, but still a weak national outcome requiring urgent attention to literacy, numeracy, teacher support and school accountability across both urban and rural communities.
