The examination body also said it has
expended N500m as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in support of Nigerian
universities to increase their capacity to give admission to applicants every
year in the last five years.
The JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede,
who made the disclosure in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, at a public
lecture titled, “The Imperatives of JAMB in Tertiary Education in Nigeria”, as
part of activities to mark this year’s Gbagura Day, said, it has increased the
CSR to N750million this year.
He said, “Currently, over N50billion has
been recorded as surplus in the past five years. Over N29billion of this has been returned
directly to the CRF. About N11billion
disbursed on capital projects, Corporate Social Responsibility, savings (about
N6billion) and others in contrasts to about N52million that had been the cumulative
return of the previous 40 years.”
He berated those calling for an extension
of validity of results of Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) of
candidates, saying those behind the calls are acting in ignorance.
The JAMB registrar explained that score
that is good enough for a year may never be good enough for any subsequent year
with more brilliant candidates; owing to the limited carrying capacity,
stressing that increasing the validity period will further compound the huge
backlog of untreated admission requests and subscriptions to various
institutions in the country.
“In recent times, some people have agitated
for the retention of the results of the UTME for more than a year. But let us be clear on this. The validity of a purposeful examination as
the UTME cannot be extended beyond the purpose for which it has been
administered, thus the score of such an examination cannot be banked for future
use as done with Certification Test.
“Other reasons why UTME scores cannot be
banked and its validity could not be extended beyond a year include: each
year’s examination has different standard in terms of test difficulty and
comparability since a norm-referenced test is linked only to the test
population of a particular year.
“The psychometrics for comparability
demands a statistical procedure of linking and equating the mean, standard
deviation and rank order of performance scores to be approximately the same for
each validity year. This statistical factor
must be equated in each year’s performance for adjustment and defensibility to
the critical stakeholders on national combined selection; the purpose of the
UTME is to align it with the current Year 1 (100 level) syllabus of tertiary
institutions”.
“Change in syllabus may affect the validity
and reliability of scores for candidates for different years; if fresh school
leavers are to wait for all the earlier-school leavers to be admitted before
they (the fresh) are considered, then the fresh ones would be unduly deprived
even if they are more qualified than the earlier set”.
“The standard for each cohort is to take
the best available each year rather than rank on age of test; admission in a
given year depends on the carrying capacity of an institution and the
performance of candidates at the examination viz-a-viz their chosen courses and
programmes”.
Other parameters for admission such as
Merit, Catchment Area, Educationally Less Developed States (ELDS), state of
origin also play significant role”.
“A score that is good enough for a year may
never be good enough for any subsequent year with more brilliant
candidates;owing to the limited carrying capacity, increasing the validity
period will further compound the huge backlog of untreated admission requests
and subscriptions to various institutions.”
“Before the establishment of JAMB, the
admission of prospective students was done by each university on its own. It
was individualistic, chaotic and open to abuse as each institution set its own
admission requirements without recourse to any central and coordinating
statutory body”.
He said, “the establishment of JAMB has
ensured a unified standard for the conduct of matriculation examination,
harmonised entry requirements, ensured the placement of suitably qualified
candidates into the nation tertiary institutions and strict compliance to
admission guidelines”.
“If a central body for the assessment and
placement of qualified candidates to tertiary education institutions could be
desired when the nation had only thirteen universities, it should be more
desirable now than ever when we have more than nine hundred tertiary education
institutions”.
While institutions determine institutional
and programme cut-off marks and other Admission criteria in exercise of their
autonomy, regulatory agencies (NUC, NBTE and NCCE) decide the admission quota
for the institutions, the role of JAMB is to ensure that the set criteria are
adhered to along with the extant policies so that no qualified candidate will
be left behind.
“The existence of JAMB restraints tertiary
institutions, particularly, public tertiary ones, from arbitrariness in the
admission process. It also serves as
arbiter between the institutions and the candidates”.
“In order to protect the sanctity and
integrity of its UTME, the Board puts in place several measures to curb the
menace of examination malpractice, ensures active participation of stakeholders
through a number of standing committee set up to monitor the conduct of UTME”.
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