By Agency Report
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has inaugurated a committee of education stakeholders and experts to develop a framework to introduce life skills and critical thinking into the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME.
The JAMB Registrar, Prof. Segun Aina, inaugurated the committee on Wednesday in Abuja, saying the move was aimed at making the UTME more relevant to the changing demands of tertiary education.
Aina said UTME was primarily a ranking examination for candidates who had already obtained their O’Level qualifications, adding that it should not duplicate assessments already conducted by WAEC and NECO.
According to him, candidates have already been assessed on subject knowledge at the O’Level stage.
”So ours is a ranking task. It’s not necessarily to test your subject matter expertise.
”So we feel for the UTME examination to be purely subject matter is a duplicity of effort of sorts,” Aina said.
He said JAMB was seeking to assess skills candidates could apply in real-life situations and determine whether the current UTME format remained effective in identifying those likely to perform well in tertiary institutions.
”Are the methods that we are employing to check and predict who will do well in the university or the polytechnic or the college of education, are they still valid? Are they good enough?” he asked.
Aina noted that the UTME had remained largely unchanged for more than three decades, stressing that the examination system must be reviewed to keep pace with developments in education.
”The biggest room in the house is the room for improvement. So we want the committee to help us take a look at this,” he said.
The registrar said the committee was made up of stakeholders from different parts of the education sector because JAMB could not determine the best approach to the reform on its own.
”We cannot be judges in our own matter.
”We have assembled stakeholders and experts to examine the issue, guide us and ensure that any decision taken is acceptable to all those who will be affected,” he said.
Aina described the assignment as a national responsibility and said the committee had been given an initial period of four weeks to examine the proposal from a conceptual perspective.
Also speaking, the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, represented by his Technical Assistant, Oni Adedeji, said the initiative aligned with the Federal Government’s efforts to reform assessment in the education sector.
Alausa charged the committee to develop a standard, fair and transparent assessment system that would measure candidates’ analytical, logical and verbal reasoning abilities beyond their ability to recall subject content.
He said the committee would also determine how the proposed life skills and critical thinking components would be introduced, whether as a separate standardised examination or as part of the existing UTME subjects.
”The reform is aimed at creating an assessment system that will test not only what young Nigerians know, but also how effectively they can think, reason and solve problems.
”I strongly believe getting these rights will shape how Nigeria evaluates readiness for tertiary education now and in years to come,” he said.
The minister assured the committee of the ministry’s continued collaboration and support throughout the assignment.
Responding, the Chairman of the committee, Prof. Boniface Nworgu of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, said the effectiveness of UTME should be measured by its ability to identify candidates with a strong potential to succeed in tertiary education.
Nworgu explained that JAMB conducted a selection examination rather than a certificate examination, making it important for the examination to accurately predict candidates’ potential for academic success.
”What JAMB is expected to do and what it is doing is to look at those measures that can help us to select the candidates that have the highest promise of succeeding in academic tasks at the tertiary education level,” he said.
He said the validity of UTME needed to be reviewed regularly because the curriculum and skills required by tertiary institutions had changed over the years.
According to him, the shift in university curricula from the Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards, BMAS, to the Core Curriculum and Minimum Academic Standards, CCMAS, placed greater emphasis on skills and critical thinking.
”The focus now is the area of skills and then critical thinking. So, what JAMB is trying to do is understandable from that perspective,” Nworgu said.
He, however, said the committee would remain open to considering other measures that could improve the ability of UTME to identify candidates who were likely to succeed at the tertiary level.
”If in the course of our deliberations, we find out that there are other measures that can improve the predictive validity of the UTME, we’re certainly going to make appropriate recommendations,” he said.
Nworgu stressed the need for evidence to determine whether any changes introduced into the UTME were achieving their intended objectives.
”We are not going to make that mistake in this case,” he said.
He explained that there should be a clear basis for measuring the impact of any changes introduced.
Nworgu assured JAMB that the committee was ready to carry out the assignment and deliver its recommendations within the agreed period.
The committee comprises representatives from universities, examination bodies, professional regulatory councils, students’ groups, secondary schools and development organisations.
NAN
