Minister Of Education Urges Other Exam Bodies to Adopt CBT Approach

Despite criticisms trailing the Computer-
Based Test in the ongoing Unified Tertiary
Matriculation Examination, there are
indications that the Federal Government
will soon adopt the electronic system as
standard procedure for all examinations in
the country.

The government hinged the plan on what it
described “successful conduct of the UTME
by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation
Board in over 400 centres across the
country.

The Minister of State for Education, Prof.
Viola Onwuliri, gave the hint on Thursday,
while monitoring the conduct of the UTME
in Abuja.

Besides the ease of conducting public
examination, the CBT, she said, eliminated
all manner of malpractice.

Before now, she noted that examination
malpractice as well as difficulties in the
transportation of examination materials
characterised public examinations in the
country.

She said, “I believe that with time, other
examination bodies will also try it out and
begin to use the CBT system. However, they
still have to try it out in different ways to
adapt it to their own kind of examinations.
Because all of them are not the same thing
and their concepts are also not the same.

“There is great optimism that other
examining bodies will adopt the CBT model
once they have seen this. First, it is fast and
by the time they finish their exams in the
next two hours, the results are ready. So it
removes obstacles or huddles around
grading and examining of results and they
start getting ready for admission straight
away.”

Onwuliri said Nigerian citizens could not
afford to lag behind technologically,
considering the impact of ICT in the global
community.

This, she said, informed the government’s
decision to create and reposition the
Ministry of Communications Technology.
She said, “Our students are excited and
getting involved participating in this e-
testing like other young people around the
world. It is common knowledge that Nigeria
today is a member of the United Nations
Security Council representing this continent
and it is important that everything we do,
we also ensure that the global practice is
brought in.

“For the physically challenged, such as the
blind students, they have their Braille
machine. They are also comfortable that it
is a step ahead of what obtained before. So
for other examining bodies, I believe that
with time having seen the success that
JAMB has recorded in this examination,
they will key in appropriately once the
system have been stabilised because it is
actually easy for everybody. We do not have
to worry about engaging examiners”.

Meanwhile, the JAMB Registrar, Prof. Dibu
Ojerinde, said that since the
commencement of the examination on
March 10, the board had released the
results of 895,000 candidates through short
message services and e-mail contacts.

He said that the board was working on
reducing the number of days for the
conduct of the examination across the
country. (Punch)

We Believe This Article Was Helpful, Don’t Hesitate To Share This Information With Your Friends On Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp and Google plus.