By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi I was invited by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) sometime ago...
By Farooq A. Kperogi,
Ph.D.
Twitter:@farooqkperogi
I was invited by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation
Board (JAMB) sometime ago to participate in a discussion on how to improve the university
admission process in Nigeria. I couldn’t honor the invitation because of a
schedule conflict. But here are the thoughts I would have shared if I had a
chance to be at the discussion.
Nigeria’s education system is contemptuous of processes and
obsessed with single-metric outcomes. That is why a brilliant, hardworking
student who made consistently excellent grades in internal school exams but got
stumped in their final O-level exams doesn’t stand a chance against a bad or
mediocre student who somehow did well in the final O-level exam. This fact distorts our appreciation of the
true abilities of students.
At the moment, the most important criteria to adjudge
students’ readiness for university education in Nigeria are grades from O-level
exams and scores from the UTME. As I argued in a previous article, this is
neither fair nor helpful.
So I am proposing a more process-driven alternative to
adjudging student readiness for university education, and it’s a modified
variant of the American system. It would be nice if student performance in the
last three years of secondary school education is factored in admission
decisions. That means senior secondary schools should have transcripts and
Grade Point Averages. I am aware that some private secondary schools in Nigeria
already have this, but this needs to be done nationwide.
To ensure the integrity of the process, at the end of every
school term, secondary school principals should submit the records of student
exams— from SS1 to SS3— to state ministries of education, the federal ministry
of education (for federal secondary schools), and JAMB. At the end of three years,
an academic transcript should be created with grade point averages for every
student. There should be concordance between the transcripts in state
ministries of education (and the federal ministry of education for federal
secondary schools) and the transcripts in JAMB’s record.
Senior secondary school transcripts should then be used as
one of the criteria for admission into universities, polytechnics, and other
higher education institutions. There are many reasons why this is useful.
One, it ensures that the hard work—or lack thereof—that students invest—or fail to invest— in their senior secondary school education has real consequences. As it is now, most people don’t even remember the grades they made in their secondary school days. (Although I graduated from university more than two decades ago, I remember the grades I made in all my courses).
One, it ensures that the hard work—or lack thereof—that students invest—or fail to invest— in their senior secondary school education has real consequences. As it is now, most people don’t even remember the grades they made in their secondary school days. (Although I graduated from university more than two decades ago, I remember the grades I made in all my courses).
Second, knowing that their grades are being recorded and
archived for purposes of admission into higher education institutions will
inspire students to take their studies more seriously. Right now many students
have no real motivation to excel in internal continuous assessment tests and
end-of-term exams because results from these tests and exams are transitory and
of no momentous consequence. Of course, I am not denying that there are
students who are motivated to excel in spite of the low stakes in these
internal exams, but more will be if they know that the consequences of the
tests go beyond their schools.
Third, it helps to lessen the outsized importance attached
to high-stakes, make-or-break assessments like the Senior School Certificate
Exams and the UTME. Plus, being examined and graded by people who didn’t teach
you has its down side, which can be offset by the kind of coursework-based
assessment system I’m proposing.
In any case, when the 6-3-3-4 system was inaugurated in the
1980s, we were told that internal, school-administered continuous assessment
tests would constitute at least 40 percent of Senior School Certificate Exams.
As far as I am aware, that hasn’t happened, and I don’t know why.
Fourth, a de-emphasis on exam-based learning and an
incorporation of coursework-based assessment of students will bring our
students’ qualifications in line with international best practices. Secondary
school students in the US, for instance, are issued high school diplomas at the
end of their study. They also have transcripts and GPAs for the purposes of
university admission. Universities use this in addition to scores from
standardized university entrance tests, recommendation letters from former
teachers, and personal essays.
The UK has also been tweaking its secondary school education
to make it sensitive to the demands of the times. It transitioned from GCE
Ordinary Level to the General Certificate of Secondary Education in 1988, and
several reforms are still being proposed, including accepting science
experiments in lieu of examination.
Finally, it gives university examination committees a
broader view of candidates’ abilities and trajectories. A student with a superb
secondary school transcript but a subpar SSCE result and a mediocre UTME score
is probably the victim of disabling examination anxiety, that is, in the
absence of other extenuating circumstances.
I know brilliant secondary school classmates who did poorly
in the school certificate and university entrance exams because they were
crippled by the dread of being graded by external examiners who didn’t teach or
know them. Such students deserve an interview from admission committees, and
the only way such students can be identified is if an internally administered
coursework-based assessment system is instituted in secondary schools.
Like all solutions, this is isn’t foolproof. The first
obvious problem is record keeping. The second is that some people can— and will—
game the system. Teachers may be persuaded, coerced, or bribed to inflate
grades if the grades are part of the criteria for university admission. But
school certificate and UTME exams are also subject to abuse. There is no point
giving examples of these abuses because everyone interested enough to read this
article to this point knows what I am talking about.
Solutions are not abandoned because they are subject to
abuse. Most importantly, giving this option a chance helps create a rich,
diverse composite of criteria that can be used to determine the suitability of
candidates for admission into universities, polytechnics, and other higher
education institutions in a fair, just, and equitable manner.
No comments
Share your thoughts and opinions here. I read and appreciate all comments posted here. But I implore you to be respectful and professional. Trolls will be removed and toxic comments will be deleted.