Michael Omoregbee argues that it makes no sense banning students from writing external exams
On the 24th of September, 2021, news of the instruction by the Federal Ministry of Education preventing students in unity schools in Nigeria from writing “external examinations such as NABTEB (NTC and NBC), WASSCE, NECO (SSCE) by SS1 and SS2 students” hit major national dailies.
According to a letter signed by Hajia Binta Abdulkadir and confirmed by the Director of Press and Public Relations, Ben Bem Goong, “Students who are involved in the practice find it difficult to settle down on serious studies. They become unruly and distract other students from achieving their goals.” The letter further warns, “Any student caught to have written any of the above examinations in SS1 or SS2 classes will be expelled from the college. All students must write these examinations after they have been duly registered for the examination by the college.”
As usual, this directive, which the Ministry instructed the heads of unity schools to bring to the attention of staff, parents and students, has been met with divergent responses from citizens. I will reserve my opinion about the practicability of the directive for the second half of this write up. There is an ambiguity the letter introduces that I feel requires clarification.
Examining bodies in Nigeria usually have two to three streams of exams yearly. WAEC, the regional SSCE conducting body, as well as NECO, has what is called the PCE. That stands for Private Candidates Examination. Pre-COVID pandemic era, that exam used to hold between September and November. Its Nigerianese nomenclature is “GCE” and it usually plays host to both adult seekers who want to upgrade their certificates for promotions on the one hand and young candidates who wanted a sneak peek into the examination from an earlier class of SS1 or SS2. This is an external examination. Take note. It is the external exam.
The WASSCE, acronym for West African Senior School Certificate Examination, is conducted by the West African Examination Council as a more or less internal examination for which candidates who have done three years of senior secondary education in Nigerian schools are registered. Technically, schools present their students to be examined by WAEC and NECO for the issuance of the West African School Certificate. This, therefore, is technically an INTERNAL exam conducted by WAEC in collaboration with ministries of education with public and private secondary schools playing host.
The ambiguity in the directive from the Federal Ministry of Education is whether the ban imposed targets the private candidates’ examination which can be taken by anybody and is usually written in public primary schools or it targets the internal examination conducted by the external bodies which must be taken under a registered secondary school approved by WAEC.
Is the Ministry saying that Nigerian students in SS1 or 2 who choose to attempt the EXTERNAL examination from the comfort of their parents’ homes, as a failsafe mechanism or preparatory to their own internal exams to be taken a year or two later in unity schools are debarred from doing so? Is this the directive? Is a parent now prevented from registering his child for the external exams, even during holidays? In unity schools that are day, is the government saying my child cannot skip school days to take an external examination, if that’s what the home wants?
The mid part of the directive suggests that the worry of the Ministry is that kids in unity schools are being enrolled in private and public schools for the INTERNAL exams and some seem to be getting results that could make their continued schooling unnecessary at the secondary level. As the letter laments, it would seem that kids who have taken the internal exams “externally” (meaning, they’ve been presented for the exams by other schools apart from the unity schools) are unruly in class, arrogant towards their teachers and becoming a very negative influence on those who did not take the exams and whose hopes are the internal exams for which the schools would present them in the next one or two years.
To be sure, these worries by the Ministry are both germane and realistic. My little worry is that the Ministry’s response is probably belated. The timing of the response reflects the perpetual sluggish response of the Nigerian state to critical derailments in the evolution of critical sectors. It is one more indication that the behemoth called the Federal Ministry of Education is incapable of feeling the pulse of the Nigerian educational outlay until, paralysed by a bad case of atherosclerosis, the pulse peters down to silence.
What doesn’t drain in this country? Brain-drain, life-drain and now candidates-drain. While I do not find anything wrong with a home registering their child for an external exam preparatory for their internal exam, I find it amusing that this irks the Federal Ministry to the point of issuing such a directive. I find it amusing that the students would be expelled from school for taking an external examination. And I ask myself, “What does the child really lose by being expelled?” No university admits with a testimonial, remember. You don’t need a post-primary testimonial to gain admission into a university in Nigeria. Truth is, you don’t even need a post-primary school attendance.
According to the educational system which the same Ministry set in motion, schooling actually ends formally at the Basic 9 level which is JSS3. From then, whether you acquired your certificate and passed the UTME from your kitchen is totally irrelevant. There is no certificate value in attending and completing a unity school programme at the senior level. It may provide an environment for mentorship, a place for gaining vital relationship experience that could serve the students when they attend higher institutions. Parents may draw some social value or bragging rights from the spectacle of attending their wards’ graduation from unity schools. It ends there. The university doesn’t ask for the school that gave you your five credit passes. They just need to see the passes. A credit pass from a unity school has no more weight than a credit pass from any secondary school in Nigeria, including one from a PCE organised by WAEC or NECO.
If the Federal Ministry understands where education is headed in the nation and globally, they would be far less concerned about this belated response. The response is belated because, as late as 1994 when I forayed into remedial education in Benin City, writing the WAEC external examination from SS1 and 2 was already a given! That would be 30 years ago in three years! Today, kids hardly settle into SS1 before connecting with a school that would gladly accept them to take the internal WAEC exam “externally”. The number of those interested in the PCE conducted by WAEC and NECO has been declining steadily since then. The attraction is for the internal, for obvious reasons. Many centres are active in exam fraud and the spin of financial gains for exam supervisors, ministry officials and schools is smoother with the internal exams.
The Federal Ministry should have more concern about the malpractice in these examinations which fuels the current craze for writing certificate exams before the three years of senior school have elapsed. That, I believe, is a more productive engagement than threatening to expel those who may genuinely have attempted the private candidates examination as part of preparing for the final examination. With universities in the nation legally accepting certificates from PCE conducted by both WAEC and NECO, it crosses the line of parents’ fundamental rights and probably disenfranchises well-intentioned citizens from seeking the best educational pathways for their wards.
Questions would be, “Is there a guarantee that if my ward waited and took the internal certificate examination for which the unity school presented him, the result would be good enough for him to gain admission into the university? If such guarantees don’t exist (and we know they don’t) should my ward be prevented from seeking help elsewhere?
The Ministry should kindly clarify the ambiguity and, as I have humbly opined, concentrate her energies on curbing malpractice at the certificate examinations level. More spoils are to be won in that battle than expelling Nigerian kids from school because they took an exam a year or two before their prescribed time. What if they’re ready and can actually pass the exam?
Omoregbee, educationist, actor and public affairs commentator, wrote from Benin City
