The Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) is a critical gateway for Nigerian students aspiring to enter tertiary institutions.
However, a persistent issue plagues this annual rite of passage: a significant number of candidates consistently fail. Understanding the root causes of these failures is crucial in addressing the systemic issues that hinder student success.
On Monday, 29 April, 2024, the Joint Administration Matriculation Board (JAMB) announced that 76 per cent of the candidates, totaling 1,402,490, out 1,989,668 registered candidates scored less than 200 benchmark score in the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) which was conducted by the organisation.
Imagine the candidates who had straight A’s in their SSCE, but do not get up to 200 benchmark score in the UTME. I think that something is wrong somewhere.
These days, it is a common practice among parents, school owners and teachers. Most parents pay for cribs, while teachers, school proprietors and school proprietresses give cribs to students in their final-year examinations so that they can pass with flying colours.
Most school owners strongly believe that if the candidates do not pass excellently, parents will withdraw their children or there may be low patronage of their businesses. This is the beginning of their failure! A child, who cannot remember anything in the SSCE after six good years of study in the secondary school, cannot pass.
Evidently, school owners contribute a lot to the children’s woes; they (school owners) give cribs to their examination candidates in almost all external examinations conducted in the country, including Common Entrance, Junior NECO (JSCE), SSCE (WASSCE and Senior NECO) in the country. This is the reason for which I do not believe in their cheap straight A’s.
In those days, we would not know exact questions that our teachers wanted to set. We used to read everything that we were taught by our teachers because we did not know what the questions would look like. In a worrisome manner, we would match into the examination halls, would sit the examinations and would get average in the examinations. We were still brilliant and happy with our results.
Today, we are doing great in life. Unfortunately, most private school owners today ask teachers to prepare the students for internal examinations and tests with the questions that the teachers have set. Yet, the children fail woefully. And, to avoid backlashes, school owners send padded examination or test results to the children’s parents.
This act is not only rampant in primary and secondary schools across the nation, but is also common in some private-cum-State higher educational institutions in the country.
In addition, mobile phones, entertainment, Internet fraud, mining bitcoins, among others have taken up their minds. They hardly ask questions or read their books. They always want to use expensive mobile phones, wear expensive clothing items and use expensive cars at tender ages.
They have no sense of reasoning and lack discipline and morality. They prefer partying, dancing on Tick-tock and buying expensive mobile phones to buying books and reading.
Above all, most of them have lost their sanity; they waylay their teachers and beat them (their teachers) up. This happen in public schools, private schools, intramurals and extramurals. How do you expect such children to pass excellently or be great in life?
In the Twenty-first Century, it is so ignominious that teachers now live at the mercy of the students that they teach; they live, work and walk in fear even as they receive meager amounts as their salaries or stipends.
Sadly, most school owners or tutorial owners prefer to relieve an instructor rather than chide the erring students as the erring students, who perpetrate these vicious acts, go away unpunished because they (school owners or tutorial owners) are concerned with money, not the lives of the children.
