With 76% failure rate in JAMB and 84.36% success rate in WAEC by candidates, definitely there’s a disconnect between the secondary school curriculum and JAMB syllabus /questions. Our managers of education should look into this obvious disharmony.

Something must be wrong somewhere. Either the standard of education continues to drop while the quality of JAMB syllabus and questions continue to rise. Or there is a lot of examination malpractices at the secondary school levels. I can’t understand why 84.36% of students will have at least 5 credits including english and mathematics and only 24% of them can “pass” jamb with 200 marks and above. Assuming roughly that successful WAEC candidates were the major (or only) candidates that sat for jamb exams. It makes the matter worse when we consider that many candidates who sat for jamb this year like past years were experienced “jamb customers” who had gone through years of post secondary tutorial experience. By this higher success rate in jamb is expected.

JAMB is an examination body, not a middle, premilinary school to a university like HSC/A’Level School, so I feel it should be very conversant with the curriculum of the secondary school which is the main “feeder school” for its candidates. Or the secondary education syllabus should be updated to the expected curriculum of jamb since it’s the only or major gateway to university admission.

It makes nonsense of our educational system that year in year out we continue to feed our university with highest percentage of “olodo” (dullard) students who can’t score far above 200. 76% failure rate is very dangerous, it means candidates with low score as low as 160 may be consider for admission “to fill in the gap” Other factors are also responsible for increasing failure rate in jamb, but the factor of disharmony in the syllabuses of the secondary education and JAMB is a strong factor. As it’s now, only very brilliant teachers can pass JAMB’s questions glowingly with outstanding performance and within the short time allocated for the questions. .

We need to critically look into curriculum design and harmonization right from JSS 1 to SSS 3 so as to prepare our children /candidates well for the “Almighty JAMB”. If we need to reintroduce HSC to upgrade standard so be it. And if JAMB will be proscribed to allow each university test its candidates since they are now conducting post-jamb examination and screening, so be it.

I do not think the standard of any examination body like JAMB should be measured in the higher failure rate of its candidates annually. That’s an old style of standard evaluation. As it’s now, it’s like after teaching a learner how to drive a car like Camry we now give him/her a Dangote articulated truck to drive at testing ground during his final driving test by FRSC /VIO. Let’s all stakeholders in education look into this critically, please. Enough of WAEC and JAMB success and failure rates contradiction. Thank you.

Adeola Soetan is
Coordinator Citizenship Civic Awareness Centre.