Other than the Student Loan Scheme and ASUU’s never-ending industrial action or threats of it, two further issues have dominated our education policy landscape in recent months. These are the generally abysmal performance of students in this year’s university entrance examination and the newly “rediscovered” policy by the Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman, that a student must reach a minimum of 18 years before entering university. For me, the two issues are not only directly connected, they are both also intertwined with other important issues and reforms our educational system need right now.
When I first read the news about the generally poor performance of applicants for the 2024 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) when the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) released a lot of statistical data on the results in late April, I was personally neither surprised nor disappointed. If anything, I was rather perplexed that poor performance in JAMB exams has suddenly become a subject of lamentation by various public commentators. No doubt, the current leadership of JAMB has tended to be more policy-orientated than previously, and for that reason, tends to release statistical data on students’ performance in its exams annually. Therefore, we are now more aware of what is going on at that level of our educational system than previously.
Otherwise, as far as I know, students have generally performed quite poorly in JAMB exams, year in, year out, a very serious problem for our human capital and national development priorities. I have always thought that JAMB exams are the most reliable test of a student’s academic ability in Nigeria, at least at that transition point between secondary and tertiary education. As a lecturer for many years, I noticed the significant variance in performance between many students’ secondary school results (WAEC and NECO), and the same students’ JAMB scores. It was rather common to find students with fantastic WAEC or NECO results, but the same students would achieve only average scores in JAMB.
Unfortunately, as a society, we no longer take JAMB exams seriously enough, certainly not in the same the way as, for example, the UK Advanced Level examinations (A-Levels), the US Scholastic Aptitude Test (SATs), and China’s Gaokao are taken seriously by students, parents, universities, governments, some employers and nearly everyone else in these, and many other countries. In most countries, in fact, university entrance examinations are the very first major experience of a merit-based society many young people encounter in their lives, and often, with serious implications for their overall life chances and achievements. And for this reason, governments, parents, schools and examination boards, devote a lot of attention and resources to them.
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But in our case, we have seemed content with our young people churning out generally poor results in JAMB every year. And almost no one seems to care, until now. I hope public interest in students’ performance in our university entrance exam will continue because, consider, for example, some of the data for this year’s UK A-Levels; that country’s equivalent university entrance exam. Of the 825,390 entries in 2024 A-Levels, 27.6 per cent (or over 227, 000 entries) gained A or A* in all three or four subjects they enrolled for; that is, a score of 80-89 (A) or 90-100 (A*) in each subject. By comparison, out of the 1,842,464 students whose results were first released by JAMB in April this year, just a paltry 0.4 per cent (or 8,401 students) scored above 300; that is, an average score of 75 in each of the four JAMB subjects.
While the comparison above is not straightforward, given the differences in the grading systems of the two exams, they are sufficiently indicative—and alarming—of how far behind we are compared to other countries. In fact, countries like South Korea, China and Japan have regularly outperformed even the UK in similar exams. Furthermore, in Nigeria, overall, just about 24 per cent (or just over 442,000 out of nearly 2 million applicants) scored 50 per cent (200/400) and above in JAMB, a stinkingly poor performance for a country whose leaders spout “development” in almost every breath. So, how do we explain such poor performance and what we, Nigeria as a whole, do about it?
While there are many factors in play here, I think age is also a significant one. For the majority of human beings everywhere, age is strongly correlated with academic performance up to age 18, meaning that 18-year-olds are generally better equipped to deal with advanced-level study than 16 or 15-year-olds, even though we know exceptional students. The research on this is simply unimpeachable. And in any case, you cannot make what is true for exceptional students the norm for a national policy. That is why, the education minister’s insistence on the policy of 18 years as a minimum age requirement for entering university is sound.
But by itself alone, it would not be enough. For example, most students who sit for A-Levels in the UK are already 18 years of age or above. The same is true for the SAT in the US, as well as for other university entrance exams in many countries. In Nigeria, however, the first problem lies with the sequencing of the exams themselves. JAMB exams come up in March or April each year, but WAEC and NECO come up in May/June, each year. This means that majority of students sit for JAMB annually even before they write their WAEC. Yet, the JAMB curriculum across all subjects is a notch or two above the O’-level of WAEC/NECO, and nearer to the advanced level study of university or tertiary education.
Perhaps, another way to go about this would be to require final students to write WAEC and NECO first before enrolling for the JAMB exam the following year. If students write WAEC and NECO in May, June and July in 2024, for example and sit for their JAMB in March or April 2025, then there is a higher chance that most of them would have attained the age of 18 by the time they are due to enter university in September or October of the same year. Moreover, the 8-9 months between WAEC/NECO and JAMB would afford candidates time to prepare separately, and therefore would presumably perform better in the JAMB exam. When students are older even by a year after secondary school, and perform better in JAMB, they would generally be better equipped to deal with university-level study than when they catapult straight from secondary school, at least, for the majority.
This is important because even though I don’t have any statistics to cite, I would say that probably more than half of all first-year students who come straight from secondary school, even for those with good JAMB scores, also tend to perform generally average or worse in their first and second semester exams at university. This is mainly because the level of content is higher than what they had left only months earlier in secondary school. At least, they tend to do worse than those who enter university through a direct entry route with national diplomas, IJMB, or other higher-level qualifications.
Finally, the best place to enforce the age rule is probably not at the university entrance level, but at the very root of it: nursery and primary school. The rule is clear, and has been for a long time. A child must attain the age of six before starting their first year of in Nigeria, regardless of the number of years of nursey education they have had, whatever that means. Unfortunately, with the proliferation of private schools, running all sorts of contentious “British”, “American”, “Canadian” and whatever education systems, this rule is observed more in the breach throughout the country. Thus, if the Ministry of Education can simply enforce this rule at the level where it matters the most, there is a good chance that most young people entering university would already be 18 or over.
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