Recently, the media was agog with the news about the recommendation by a committee headed by Steve Orosanye set up by the Federal Government to reduce the cost of governance in the country. The committee recommends scrapping of the National Examination Council. Also included for possible scrapping is the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination being conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board.
These decisions were all based on the recommendations
It will be recalled that in the report, the committee proposed the abolition of 38 agencies, merger of another 52 and reversion of 14 agencies to departments in the relevant ministries. The over 800 page report with its 110-page Summary highlighted significant changes for the civil service.
Significant amongst these changes were the scrapping of NECO, abolition of UTME and mainstreaming JAMB as the clearing house without conducting any further examinations. The latter’s core function will be setting standards alongside the authorities. This will then give authorities of all tertiary institutions liberty to conduct their entrance examinations as they have been doing for post – UTME.
In addition, the West African Examinations Council will be empowered to conduct two Senior Secondary School certificate examinations per year, one in January, another in December as well as the May/June Senior Secondary Certificate Examination.
These updates were greeted with mixed reactions by Nigerians perhaps even more by parents who would at least stop the seeming double payment for similar services. In some states, particularly where NECO was not a state priority, the scrapping of the examination body will not only come as a relief but a vindication of the challenges posed by it. Establishing an examining body parallel to WAEC indeed was generally seen as ominous. This is not overlooking the recent tempestuous ride of WAEC on issues like mix-up in results, delay in releases, double results, etc. In spite of all this, there remain some sanity in scores which is contrary to the incredible high scores recorded in NECO by pupils who barely sat through WAEC. The seeming generosity in marks appeared to not a few, that the exams could somewhat have been compromised or like a few said, “The Nigerian educational system had surrendered to inferiority”. These concerns may perhaps be the reason why many had yet to accept NECO as a complement to WAEC and many universities (if any) took it as a priority result for entry. So, obviously, these decisions thus far were unanimously welcomed and could be termed a popular demand.
Having said this though, the recommendation that universities be left to unilaterally conduct their entrance examinations viz a viz the post –UTME structure remains a personal worry. Across all levels, any process not mainstreamed with transparency and accountability is fundamentally challenged. Worse in the education sector. A recent research conducted amongst over 40 schools (mix of public and private schools) to establish their views on the post–UTME examinations being conducted by the universities, showed that aside from the popularly known opportunity to generate income for the tertiary institutions, there exists an intensely visible level of “cartelisation” as out of the 40 schools whose heads and staff were interviewed, 80 per cent called for the scrapping of the test or better still, if so relevant, mainstreaming best practice processes and procedures towards ensuring that any form of malpractice is at best minimised.
According to Ibiabuo Abie of a community secondary school in Rivers State, a post-UTME test is a complete NO! NO. He said, “lecturers are in the habit of exploiting candidates by giving high scores to those who do not deserve such. The children are exposed to all manner of conception as they are expected to ‘sort’ their way through. The lecturers and VCs are demigods. The subjects written as part of the school entry / post-UTME are most times also not relevant to the courses for which the students intend to study leading to frustrations and increased dropout rate. Intriguing also is the late releases of these post-UTME results. Creating even more uncertainty amongst the students”.
Therfore, to make this step functional and sustainable, there is a need to be in place set criteria to enhance sanity and transparency, mainstreaming standards. Pursuing consistency and balance across the universities is key with a rebranded JAMB as Ombudsman.
In my view, other ways of making this process not to add to the general pain of an almost dysfunctional education system is to guard against favouritism, fraud, extortion, and victimisation especially since most candidates applying for a particular university may be indigenes, there may be chances that fairly affiliations and home based challenges for act of revenge could surface leaving the students to bear the brunt. JAMB should stand up for all things quality assurance. Reduced politiking will boost the morale of students (and parents alike) who will see talent and hard work amply paid for and not the counterproductivity that a freebie to a not-interested student causes.
Recently, the Public Relations Officer of the Board of JAMB was quoted as saying that, “the Board is not averse to innovation, changes and government policies skewed to improve the lot of the sector”. Well, it is my hope that they classically and clearly understand the weight of this statement as it is right now, it’s time to move from debate to action.
A member of the House of Representatives, Chief Andrew Uchendu, noted recently that “it is not enough to simply give approval to scrap some agencies or merge existing institutions, the government should ensure that the relevant Acts that established these agencies are amended or else it will be seen as an illegality”. In my view, if the Oronsaye report committee and the Adegoke White Paper committee did not put this into consideration in the over two-year effort, then we are sitting on a keg of maybe small gunpowder.
The fact that we need to reform the public service in the country, to me, is a given. To ensure it is done within the confines of the law is an expectation. To ensure appropriate cross sector stakeholder engagement is a popular principle especially as some agencies may have been established by Acts of the Parliament, which can only or majorly be altered through an appropriate legislative process.
As the saying goes, one man’s meat though is another man’s poison. It is only in Nigeria that candidates seeking admission to tertiary institutions face as many as four examinations. Some brilliant ones may lament but many see the multiplicity of the exams as an opportunity to guarantee them a place in the tertiary institution one way or another. So, there should be a need to bring about some level of sanity in the sector.
From attitude to work by civil servants to settling down to study for students, it may not be Uhuru yet in the education sector but it surely is a strategic step to saving what is left of the pieces that most aspect of the education sector has become. However ,the government has a strong role in improving quality of teachers and teaching, infrastructural review and continued training. Nigerians are always hopeful and would want to see a glimmer of hope for the education sector.
No comments:
Post a Comment