No UTME Candidate will Score Zero, Says JAMB

No UTME Candidate will Score Zero, Says JAMB

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has disclosed that it has introduced a policy of score standardisation under which Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) candidates cannot score zero, even if they are absent from the examination.

JAMB added that under this new policy, candidates who did not attempt any question or who did not get any answer correctly would be awarded a “common scale with uniform metric.”

In a paper presented by its Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, on score standardisation at the 45th International Association for Education Conference held in Azerbaijan, which was contained JAMB weekly bulletin, the JAMB boss said the policy means that all candidates, who are registered for a paper, will be awarded a score for that paper, and there would be no zero score.

“The adoption of the score standardisation is a technical procedure for transforming candidates’ raw scores in the different subjects taken by each candidate to a common scale with uniform metric or units, which is the globally accepted procedure.

“The general public hardly understands nor appreciates why scores should be transformed and this has been generating controversies and throwing up all sorts of unfounded arguments. It is to be noted that some poorly educated professionals consider the transformation of scores as an arbitrary allocation of unmerited scores.

“The issue has been compounded by candidates whose scores of zero were transformed alongside other candidates’ scores of above zero. Transformation is generally across board and was not focused on individual candidates.

“Candidates with zero scores include those whose attempts earned them zero because they did not get any answer correct; those who mischievously did not attempt any question throughout the course of the examination as well as those who were absent from examination.”

Related Articles