JAMB and lower cut off points
Ihave been reading lamentations by many parents, prospective students and other stakeholders about this year’s conduct of JAMB CBT examination. I have also read an alleged press release from JAMB on social media on the new minimum cut off points required for admission into Colleges of Education, Polytechnics and Universities across the country now said to be between 150 and 200!
My younger brother while lamenting the poor performance of prospective students this year in JAMB examination was even telling me that some few years back, JAMB had to review upward the marks allocated to the prospective students! And I was like asking: ‘Is JAMB score now by allocation or by performance?’
It is on record that our educational system, especially the public sector education that constitute almost 90% of the entire system by my estimation, has been on consistent decline right from the Primary School level to the highest level from the mid-1980s to date. I kept wondering how and why we were expecting some miracles at JAMB level when at the lower levels the quality is nauseatingly and consistently getting poorer by the day. The truth is lowering JAMB minimum cut off points to as low as 150 nationally is not and will never be the solution to our collective national aspirations for quality manpower and human resources in the 21st century.
At the rate at which we are moving, I hope we won’t wake up one day in Nigeria to have JAMB cut off points of 40 for University admission in Nigeria in the name of poor handling of the examination by JAMB or wide spread poor performance by the prospective students which, in or by itself, is caused by the dangerous neglect of our public primary and secondary schools by all the tiers of government across Nigeria?!
For as long as we continue to neglect these two levels of basic education as parents, students, teachers, communities, governments and stakeholders, I am sorry to say that there would be no respite for Nigeria to attain an increasingly qualitative and quantitative educational growth and development.
To me, the 180 JAMB cut off points for admission into Colleges of Education, Polytechnics and Universities across the country should be maintained as the minimum JAMB requirement! We can’t hope for better teachers, one of the primary factors in good educational delivery, in our country when those with the lowest points are the ones sent to be trained as teachers. We can’t possibly hope for any outstanding Science Technology and Innovation (STI) breakthroughs when the prospective students that get enrolled into Nigerian Polytechnics are second rated to those that go to the Universities. We can’t plant tomatoes and expect to harvest apples! Never!
This is an issue of national concern, please. We either do something decisive now or forget real growth, development and capacity building of and for our large population.
Abdulrahman Mohammed Alfa, Abuja.