Education

We’ve examined over 34 million Nigerians in 25 years — NECO

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12 months ago

The Registrar and Chief Executive of the National Examination Council (NECO), Professor Dantani Wushishi, has revealed that the Council has been discharging its responsibilities creditably, in line with the dreams of its founding fathers, in the last 25 years.

He said the Council has so far examined over 34 million Nigerian youths through its various streams of examinations conducted annually.

Wushishi spoke on Wednesday in Abuja at an interactive session with the Education Correspondents Association of Nigeria (ECAN), where he reeled out some of his milestones since his assumption of office as Registrar of NECO in 2022.

Wushishi also clarified that, because of the nature and complexity of its examination, the Council is not considering an immediate migration from paper to computer-based testing (CBT).

According to him, by virtue of being the body conducting the largest number of examinations, migrating to CBT would be a gradual process.

“For the fact that NECO is the largest examination body by virtue of the number of examinations we conduct, migrating to CBT is a critical issue.

“For JAMB, they are not examining candidates in so many subject areas, so they find it very easy to embrace CBT in their examinations and do multiple choice in their exams.

“As far as NECO is concerned, if you look at the nature of our examinations, particularly the Secondary School Certificate Examination, SSCE, and internal admissions into tertiary institutions, every year we examine students close to 1.5 million, which is a large number.

“For these 1.5 million candidates, we examined them in 76 different subjects and more than 150 different papers.

“So if we look at the complexity of these exams, particularly the essays where we have different papers, going to CBT is something that experts need to sit down and look at the nitty-gritty of the exams,” he said.

While reeling out some of his achievements, Wushishi said the Council has been able to print a backlog of certificates for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) from 2011 to 2022.

It has also printed the backlog of certificates for the Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE), both internal and external, from 2018–2021.

He also noted that so far, the council has examined 34 million Nigerian youths and conducted trial-testing examinations for the selection of the best items in its examination.

He said: “Upon my assumption of office on July 26, 2024, I embarked on a tour of our offices around the country, and this resulted in the formulation of policies that have brought a positive turn-around in the Council.

“Provision of an e-library to enhance access to information and data on educational assessment with a view to enhancing job efficiency in test development, quality assurance, and curbing examination malpractice and other infractions associated with public examinations in 2022.

“Introduced the use of stanine software in determining grade boundaries for BECE, SSCE Internal, and SSCE External examinations, which is an innovation in the history of NECO. This brings to rest the use of manual methods in determining grade boundaries in 2022,” he said.

Wushishi added that the Council has leveraged technology and other measures to ensure standards and best practices in the conduct of its examination.

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