For the over 1.4 million youths who wrote last Saturday’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), it must have come off as a mixed grill of sorts. Apart from the tragic
accident which claimed the lives of five of the applicants along the Ahoada-Abua road in Rivers State, there were reports of logistic hiccups trailing the exercise across the board. Most notable were the reports of late arrival of the biometric machines which the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) had introduced to forestall examination malpractices. In Abuja in particular, the body had to dispense with the use of biometric machines in favour of manual verification of the candidates due to late arrival of the device. There were other challenges too.
There were cases of students whose names could not be found on the lists in the designated centres; others who could not be admitted into the examination halls because they presented fake e-slips – luckless victims of unscrupulous cyber cafe operators.
In Lagos, there were tales of candidates not being provided with writing materials contrary to the pledge by JAMB, with those affected later required to source for writing materials at examination venue. On the whole, there were no reported cases of cheating and other forms of examinations malpractices.
Like every human organisation, there will always be room for improvement. However, some of the observed lapses – such as the cases of missing names – are inexcusable for an examination body. Indeed, some of the lapses could have been dealt with before the examination day to save the student-applicants the unnecessary trauma. We are certainly convinced that the board can do a better job with better planning and organisation.
Having said that, we are nonetheless satisfied that the examination went smoothly. Despite the hiccups, the deployment of biometric technology deserves to be lauded for offering a near fool-proof solution to examination practices particularly in places where they were used. No wonder this year’s examinations appear a vast improvement on previous exercises, in terms of confronting the challenges that have threatened to call the integrity of the examination into question.
We continue to make the point however that JAMB’s position would remain an unenviable as long as government neglects to take necessary measures to increase the capacity of our higher institutions for more intakes.
This is because, getting the 1.4 million applicants to sit for the examinations is nothing compared to the pressure and the attendant frustrations faced by our young ones in their bid to secure placement in the nation’s tertiary institutions. With every cycle of JAMB examination, the number of applicants continues to outstrip the capacity of the institutions. A better picture is to appreciate that only an estimated 25 percent of the applicants stand any chance of being offered admission in the current year. That seems to be the crux of the matter.
Our expectation from JAMB is for the board to go back to the drawing board to identify areas of its strengths and weaknesses to enable it reposition itself to do a better job next time. It seems to us that the rewards of its investments in capacity building is reaping for it bountiful harvests. As the sole body charged with conducting examination into our tertiary institutions, it cannot afford to rest on its oars; at least not now when the salvaging hands of all stakeholders are needed to rescue the educational sector. Saturday’s outing has merely highlighted the possibilities. The underlying lesson is that a lot can be achieved with proper planning, discipline and determination.-The nation Editorial
0 comments:
Post a Comment