Exam board urged to extend validity of results

olamide oni

November 18, 2015 9:45 AM

The Nigerian senate has urged the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMBto extend the validity of results to 3 years.

JAMB

The Nigerian senate has urged the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB to extend the validity of results to three years.

This would mean that results obtained from the board by candidates seeking admission into universities are expected to last for three years.

This directive was made following a motion entitled: ”JAMB’s New Admission Policy,“ sponsored by Senator Joshua Lidani.

The senate asked the exam body to stop the practice of re-assigning candidates to schools they never applied to, saying such policy was contrary to the act establishing the board, while urging them to consult with the Parents Teachers Association, ASUU, and other stakeholders in the education sector so they can come up with friendlier holistic, comprehensive and sustainable admissions policy.

Senator Lidani discouraged the JAMB practice where students were sometimes posted into schools which their parents/guardians cannot afford. The policy of posting students to schools far away from their place of abode was also frowned upon.

Lidani expressed worry that although the Federal Ministry of Education had since suspended the implementation of this policy, JAMB was still going ahead with its implementation, thus creating more hardship for parents and uncertainty in the education sector.

Lidani disclosed that this disturbing policy goes against 5(1)(C) iii of the JAMB Act, which according to him, requires that JAMB should take into account preferences of the candidates in their choices of schools and the subsequent confusion surrounding the directive that only candidates whose names were forwarded to the university by JAMB were eligible for post-UTME screening and others would have to go back to JAMB website to find out their new institutions.

At the 2015 Combined Policy Meeting which was held on July 14, 2015, a policy was adopted which stated that candidates of universities with surplus applicants for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations, UTME, were reassigned to other universities with lower number of candidates than their capacities.

Lidani then added a reminder that JAMB was a board created to administer a centralized admission for universities, polytechnics and colleges of education in Nigeria.

olamide oni