Mixed Reactions Trail Mass Failure in JAMB/UTME 2021

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By Salim Yunusa

 

 

Mixed reactions across the country have greeted the high level of failure among candidates in the last Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) as reflected in the just released results by Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB).

 

Social media have been particularly awash with different comments about the generally poor performance of candidates in the UTME, with many decrying the mass failure.

 

Numerous commentators described as worrisome the fact that that more than 500,000 candidates out of the 1.3 million candidates who sat for the examination could not score 45% or 180 marks of the maximum marks in the examination.

 

According to the results released by JAMB, less than 500 candidates also scored above 300 marks.

 

There are, therefore, worries that too many candidates might be unable to meet the official ‘cut-off’ or minimum marks to secure admissions for their chosen course of study in the respective universities and other tertiary institutions across the country.

 

However, some commentators, including teachers, students and even parents trading blames since the release of the results, with some attributing the poor performance to students poor attitude to their studies.

 

Specifically, not a few argued that secondary school students were generally spending precious time on popular internet sites and computer games rather than commiting such time to their studies.

 

The dismal performance of the candidates is the outcome of

more and more secondary school students were neck-deep in the use of popular but time-consuming social media applications and past time, which prevent them from taking their studies seriously.

 

Others have also placed the blame at the doorsteps of teachers and the public and private school authorities who are largely responsible for poor teaching or learning situation and the resultant poor background in education.

 

However, candidates and critics also carpeted JAMB for the many unprecedented hitches this year, which apparently contributed to the poor UTME performance, such as serious disruption in entering their NIN Profile Code and widespread network failures suffered at numerous examination centres without prompt rescheduling of the computer-based exams for the affected candidates.

 

JAMB has also been accused of deducting marks from many candidates scores for no fault of theirs as the hitches were caused by system malfunctions.

 

An educationist, Sheikh Sheikh, who provides free tutoring lessons for prospective JAMB candidates, said, “What the students lack is preparation. The students don’t read and spend too much time on social media.”

 

Salim Ibrahim, a journalist, said, “It is the responsibility of the students, the teachers and parents to ensure that the students get prepared for the exams; but the truth is that the candidates are generally not prepared”.

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