By Olakunle Olafioye
Nigeria faces a daunting task in its battle against examination fraud particularly regarding the conduct of the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination, SSSCE, organised by the West African Examination Council, WAEC, and the National Examinations Council, NECO. The enormity of this challenge was explicitly expressed by the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa who unequivocally called for an immediate transition from pencil and paper-based testing to computer-based testing beginning from next year. Nonetheless, Alausa minced no words in admitting the herculean task ahead of the move.
Barring occasional and isolated glitches in the conduct of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, the Joint Admission Matriculation Board, JAMB, has to an appreciable extent, demonstrated that the albatross of examination malpractice could be conquered with integrity restored in the results of its examination since the board transited from pencil-based testing to computer-based testing in conducting its UTME. The Minister of Education firmly believes that WAEC and NECO must follow a similar path to check examination malpractice in the country.
“We are working very hard to eliminate fraud in our exam system, and WAEC is taking the lead. We now have clear evidence that when exams are done using technology, the level of fraud is minimised to almost zero,” the minister had stated recently while monitoring the conduct of the just concluded WAEC’s CBT examinations in Abuja.
The Minister had earlier in April while monitoring this year’s UTME directed that WAEC and NECO must transit fully to CBT by next year, saying “If JAMB can successfully conduct CBT exams for more than 2.2 million candidates, WAEC and NECO can do the same.”
He, therefore, mandated the two examination bodies, directing that, “By 2026, both the objectives and the essay papers will be fully on CBT. That is how we can eliminate exam malpractices.”
But while stakeholders concede that there is indeed the need to rid the examinations conducted by the two major examination bodies off fraudulent practices which continue to undermine the integrity of the results of the examinations and certificates issued by both bodies, there has been vociferous calls on the government to approach the move more cautiously.
An expert in Test and Evaluation Principles and Vice Chancellor, Anchor University, Lagos, Prof Samuel Bandele, while lending his voice to the calls for caution in full transition to CBT recently warned that the transition to CBT exams must be done through meticulous planning in order not create more problems, while trying to sanitise the educational system at secondary school level.
Prof Bandele, who agreed that there was a need to sanitize the conduct of WAEC and NECO examination in order to restore integrity in the results from the examinations, however, pointed out that the difference in the objectives of conducting UTME and SSCE calls for caution in an attempt to transit SSCE to a full CBT examination.
According to him, “We need to understand that both WAEC and NECO are achievement tests unlike UTME which is just a screening test basically meant to prune down the number of students vying for admission into the university due to limited facilities.
“There is a clear-cut difference between an achievement test and screening test. The achievement test will reveal the ability of the student to express his ideas or communicate through his response to the question, shows his ability to innovate, imagine in an examination condition during the theory papers or tests. We need to take cognisance of the fact that any attempt to reduce these exams to only objectives in a bid to introduce CBT method will water down the quality of these exams.”
Private school owners in the country are of the view that the downside of transiting to CBT could be more.
The government while making a case for full transition to CBT had admitted that infrastructure and logistics are major concerns.
This, many school owners posit, would indeed pose a serious challenge to them because of the enormity of the finance required to provide the infrastructure for CBT in most schools.
They argue that the approach adopted by JAMB, which outsources the writing of its examination to private CBT centre operators, cannot be applied in the case of SSSCE as currently being conducted by WAEC and NECO.
A school proprietor, Mr Kolawole Ajidahun said equipping schools with computers and other facilities required for the take-off of full CBT examinations is an uphill task for most school owners in the country right now when the country is facing serious economic challenges.
Ajidahun noted that any attempt to outsource the conduct of the examination to privately operated CBT centres would spell doom for private school operators in the country.
According to him, “while JAMB can conveniently outsource the conduct of UTME to private CBT centres, WAEC and NECO cannot afford to do that.
“In writing UTME candidates apply directly to JAMB and get posted to different CBT centres where they write their exams. But in the case of WAEC and NECO, students have to apply to these examination bodies through their schools, where they will write their examinations.
“However, should the government decide that WAEC should outsource the conduct of SSCE to private CBT centres in a similar pattern with JAMB, all because we want to go fully CBT, the arrangement will upset the private school system. What will happen is that students will no longer see the reason they should come to school in preparation for SSSCE. Rather, they will prefer to patronise tutorial centres.
“The danger in such an arrangement is that we are likely to experience a situation where students will stop going to school the moment they get to senior secondary school, instead they will rather enroll in tutorial centres once they know they can apply to write their SSSCE directly to WAEC or NECO without having to go through their schools, just the way they apply to JAMB.”
Expressing a similar view, another school owner, Mrs Mary Olojede, warned the government against hurried transition from paper and pencil based examination to full CBT, saying that Nigeria is not ripe for such experiment. Olojede who advocated a gradual and phased transition said apart from the financial implication of upgrading schools and making them CBT-compliant in the next few months, the poor Internet penetration in most parts of the country especially the rural areas will put students in most parts of the country at disadvantage.
“By every standard, I don’t believe we are ready for a 360-transition to total CBT. What is the level of Internet penetration in Nigeria? Do we consider students in rural areas where there is no electricity, no Internet or access to modern day computer? How many of them have seen computers in their lives let alone operating it? We must look at all these very well before we plunge into it. My findings show that one will need at least N20 million to be able to set up a CBT examination hall with a minimum of 50 Internet-enabled computers. How many school owners can afford that?” she asked.