The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced plans to introduce life skills and critical thinking into the unified tertiary matriculation examination (UTME).
Speaking in Abuja on Wednesday, at the inauguration of the committee tasked with developing the framework, Segun Aina, JAMB registrar said the initiative would align the tertiary admission test with changing demands in higher education.
Aina said the initiative was necessary to regulate the duplication of subject-based assessments conducted by examination bodies like the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examinations Council (NECO).
He said candidates sitting for UTME had already been assessed in subject areas through their O-Level examinations.
He said the board is seeking to incorporate skills that candidates deploy in real-life situations into the assessment process.
Aina also argued that the current system should be critically reviewed to determine whether it remains effective in predicting candidates’ performance at the tertiary level.
He said JAMB constituted the committee with stakeholders from different segments of the education sector.
“We will respond to the requests of the committee as they see fit, within reason. But they’ve been given an initial time of four weeks to look into this,” he added.
Tunji Alausa, minister of education, said the initiative was consistent with the government’s broader efforts to reform assessment in the education sector.
Alausa, who was represented by Oni Adedeji, technical assistant to the acting permanent secretary at the ministry of education, urged the committee to develop standardised, fair and transparent assessment modalities capable of measuring candidates’ analytical, logical and verbal reasoning abilities.
The minister said the committee’s assignment also included determining how to deploy the proposed components by embedding them within existing UTME subjects.
Boniface Nworgu, chairman of the committee, said the effectiveness of UTME should be measured by its ability to identify candidates with the strongest prospects of succeeding in tertiary education.
Nworgu said the validity of UTME must be continuously reviewed in response to changes in the curricula and the skills requirements of tertiary institutions.
He said the transition in university curricula from the benchmark minimum academic standards (BMAS) to the core curriculum and minimum academic standards (CCMAS) had placed greater emphasis on skills and critical thinking.
Nworgu also assured that the committee would rely on evidence to determine whether proposed changes to UTME were achieving their intended objectives.
The committee comprises representatives and stakeholders drawn from universities, examination bodies, professional regulatory councils, students’ groups, secondary schools and development organisations.
The committee will submit its initial recommendations within four weeks, after which JAMB will begin the assessment stage for implementing any adopted framework.