Another giant step aimed at repositioning the quality of and eliminate malpractices in university entrance examinations in Nigeria, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB said it has kick-started the process to phase out paper examinations by 2015.
The minister of Education, Prof. Ruqqayatu Ahmed Rufai while applauding the agency for the initiative said, the move was aimed at transforming the quality of examinations where the raw scores could be known almost immediately.
She added that it is the hope of her ministry that, by 2015, every student will see the need for the She said, “I salute the effort of the federal ministry of education through JAMB. And under the administration of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, we are targeting at transforming the education sector between now and 2015. Part of the effort is to look into the issue of quality of education sector. And also to look into the issue of access. Part of the issue of quality is to ensure that we do our testing properly. We do our assessment properly so that whatever scores a student may have in any kind of examination, and whatever certificate that he will have, he will defend that certificate”.
The minister said, the ministry has been working with the state governments and other stakeholders to ensure that the aim of the administration is not defeated.
“I’m very happy that today, JAMB is doing it again. That today, we are flagging off the Computer Based Test, CBT, by JAMB. This is an effort by JAMB that requires that henceforth, we begin computer based testing. You are aware that we have been experiencing so many problems in our examinations halls. So with the computer based system that we are flagging off today, there are two major advantages: We are moving in terms of advancing the nation technologically and of course the major advantage is to reduce or completely eliminate the issue of examination malpractice”, Prof. Ruqqayatu maintained.
She also pointed out that, the initiative is to be carried out simultaneously with the paper type question papers and answer scripts in order to accommodate computer illiterate students.
In his contribution, the JAMB registrar, Prof. Dibu Ojerinde pointed out that, even though not much progress has been made in the computer based examinations in the secondary schools, the students have to be vigorously encouraged to imbibe computer literacy skills hinted that, his decision was premeditated on the premise that, a research earlier conducted shows that, most candidates prefer computer based examinations.
Responding to a question, he said, several awareness strategies have been put in place and that partnership arrangements have been worked between his agency and some private organizations.
Prof. Ojerinde also said, in addition, government centres have been established in Taraba, Benue, Abia and Kano states informing that, the examinations would be spread across 17 days after which the final results would be released.