For too long, the Federal Ministry of Education let its parastatals and tertiary institutions loose to subject young people in schools to tension and anxiety over numerous examinations they have to take in one form or the other. Where in the world do students take so many examinations at the senior secondary level before they enter tertiary institutions?
Education for a long time has been replaced by examinations. Teachers no longer teach but coach students for one examination or the other. The problems associated with external standardised testing encourages narrowing of the curriculum, teaching to the test, unethical practices related to manipulating test results and unhealthy competition among schools.
Private secondary school proprietors use the students’ scores so obtained to advertise their schools. There are much to quality in education provision than the scores obtained by students at public examinations. The quality of institutions does not necessarily be a function of its performance at public examinations. Education goes beyond passing examinations and amassing certificates.
West African Senior School Certificate Examinations, The National Examinations Council, Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, Post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, London General Certificate Examination and the Cambridge Overseas’ Examination are most of the examinations Senior Secondary School leavers are exposed. The school authorities do not provide the students proper guidance in order to limit the number of examinations to take. The students have developed such a mindset that to increase the number of credit passes that will enable them scale the matriculation requirements of tertiary institutions, there is a need to take as many examinations as resources available can allow them. These examinations have become the cogs in the wheel of sound education in this country.
What the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, has done to the Post-UTME should gladden the heart of all those who wish the children of this nation well. Apart from the UTME, conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board and the Post-UTME, conducted by the tertiary institutions, all others are pitched at the same level and equivalent. Why can’t each school decide on WASSCE or NECO as the only final year examination for its students in the upper senior secondary school?
Teaching to test has made it difficult for children to learn by doing but rather they are more exposed to long hours “of chalk- board and talk” backed up by rote learning. There is not enough time for reading to understand, as well as engaging in meaningful study without being harassed and reminded to study for any of their impending examinations. This has gone on for too long.
The announcement by the minister of education could not have come at a better time. One can argue that the minister’s statement on Post-UTME constitutes an infringement on the university autonomy. However, it can also be said that within that autonomy which is not completely absolute, the proprietor of the university, which in this case, the Federal Government, has also the right to intervene in affairs of her institutions when bad policies of the institutions constitute a danger to the well-being of her citizens.
The Post-UTME was introduced just to make money for the cash- trapped tertiary institutions. To do this, universities tried their best to run down JAMB as a legal entity claiming that candidates that come through the UTME are not the best of candidates. The impression created at the time was that JAMB imposed candidates on them – the universities. The truth is that JAMB never admits candidates into tertiary institutions and as its name suggests, whatever is done when results are released has the hands of all universities. The examining body merely ensures that the Federal Government’s guidelines on admissions are strictly followed. The persistent pressure and lobbying from the universities cajoled the Federal Government into allowing the existence of the Post-UTME. The rest is now history. What can one say about a situation where a carrying capacity of a university is say, 3,000, and the university collects money from well over 80,000 candidates in the name of post-UTME? This downright exploitation of desperate school leavers should have been stopped before now.
Rather than stand on the ivory tower to shout about university autonomy being infringed upon, the university should think outside the box and see how through research breakthroughs, the institutions’ resources can be improved. All well-meaning individuals of this nation ought to commend the minister of education for being bold enough to put an end to this monumental deceit of young senior secondary school leavers by the obstacle set up to exploit them.
Nigeria has a thing or two to borrow from the developed world about how their education systems are organised and run and adapt them within local capacity. For example, a country like Finland emerged in 2000 as the top-scoring Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development nation on the Programme for International Student Assessment. Researchers have been pouring into the country to study the so-called “Finnish miracle”. How did a country with an undistinguished education system in the 1980s surge to the head of global class in just a couple of decades?
Research suggests that Finland developed such excellence in its teaching workforce. The state publicly recognises the value of its teachers and trusts their professional judgment in schools. Finnish educational system does not employ external standardised student testing to drive the performance in schools. Neither does it employ a rigorous inspection system of schools and teachers. Instead of test-based accountability, the Finnish system relies on the expertise and professional accountability of well-groomed and highly trained teachers, who are knowledgeable and committed to their students and communities.
Along with curriculum design, teachers play a role in assessment of students. Finnish schools do not use standardised testing to determine student success.
According to Pasi Sahlberg, three reasons are adduced for this. First, while assessment practice is well-grounded in the national curriculum, education policy in Finland gives a high priority to personalised learning and creativity as an important part of how schools operate. Therefore, the progress of each student in school is judged more against his or her individual development and abilities rather than against statistical indicators. Second, education authorities insist that curriculum, teaching, and learning – rather than testing – should drive teachers’ practice in schools. Students’ assessment in Finnish schools is embedded in the teaching and learning process and is used to improve both teachers’ and students’ work throughout the academic year. Third, determining students’ academic performance and social development in Finland are seen as a responsibility of the school, not external assessors. Teachers are the best judges of how their own students are progressing in school. There may be limitations on comparability when teachers do all the grading so are also for the gradings of external assessors as indicated above in this write-up.
What the Finish teachers do in school beginning from the design and conduct of appropriate curriculum-based assessment to documentation of student progress, classroom assessment and school-based evaluation, all are important aspects of teacher education and professional development.
The only external test in Finland is the matriculation examination that students who want to go on to higher education take at the end of general upper secondary school which is equivalent Nigeria’s senior secondary school.
For the reasons adduced, could the minister consider revamping WASSCE and NECO and transform them into a final matriculation examination for upper Senior Secondary school leavers who want to enter higher institutions? The advantages are unquantifiable. The children of this country will remember him for the rest of their lives. This is just a thinking aloud!
However, all is not lost. The minister should not stop at proscribing the Post-UTME but prepare to go further to tackle a number of already identified “blind spots” in the education system for the new direction of education. The tools of the 20th Century are no longer appropriate for education in the 21st Century.
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