JAMB’s proposed e-testing centres
The announcement followed completion of this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) organised by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). This year, JAMB introduced a Computer-Based Test (CBT) for the UTME, phasing out the Pencil and Paper Test (PPT) format that had been used for many years.The CBT, according to JAMB, ensures prompt release […]
The announcement followed completion of this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) organised by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB). This year, JAMB introduced a Computer-Based Test (CBT) for the UTME, phasing out the Pencil and Paper Test (PPT) format that had been used for many years.
The CBT, according to JAMB, ensures prompt release of raw scores, eliminates case of incomplete results and result blackout, and checks examination malpractice.
Minister of Education, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, said the government would build more centres in all states across the country where the CBT examinations would henceforth be conducted. He said the centres, to be managed by JAMB, would reduce abuse by the private sector and expose students to technology. JAMB’s registrar, Professor Dibu Ojerinde, said that President Goodluck Jonathan had given assurances that the centres would be ready before the 2016 UTME.
Ojerinde noted that 400 centres were used for the kick-off of the examination this year, assuring that the exercise would be seamless next year when the proposed centres would have been approved, in addition to those to be established by the government.
In spite of initial hitches and complaints, the 2015 CBT UTME was an improvement. The fact that the results were released about two hours after examination directly to candidates’ mobile phones eliminated all forms of anxiety. Of course there’s much room for improvement on the CBT to ensure that problems encountered this year are not witnessed in subsequent examinations. One of the major problems witnessed in the last exercise was the inability of candidates to identify their centres. There were crisis situations at many JAMB offices across the country, when candidates went to enquire about their centre locations.
But the construction of new centres, as is being proposed, should be properly handled so that the buildings don’t become white elephants. The centres must be equipped as well.
More importantly too is that the implementation should be within the framework of the national policy on education, which requires the equipping of existing schools so that they can be used as centres. Construction of special centres for the sole purpose of an examination which takes place once a year or at most twice in a year would amount to waste of resources. If the purpose is to minimise abuses by the private sector, then it would make more sense to focus on equipping registered schools. Moreover, the minister’s remark that such centres would expose candidates to technology is rather odd since the candidates get to use the centres only once a year during examination. Another complaint by many candidates who sat for the last examination was that they were not conversant with the computers and as such did not know how to use them, which would have affected some of the students’ performance.
If schools are equipped with computers and these made an integral part of the students’ learning process, they would be used to the system such that when they are writing the UTME, the problem encountered in operating the equipment would have been addressed. By equipping the existing schools, the government would be tackling two problems: boosting students’ aptitude and creating functional centres for examinations. The government should resist the tradition of formulating new programmes whenever there is a problem and the award of contracts, while old policies and programmes are still pending.