By Ngozi Nwankwo
As the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board,JAMB, on Thursday, 30th March, 2023, conducted the 2023 Mock-UTME in 725 centres across the nation, it has apologised to the candidates and parents for the hitches experienced during the examination.
The Board said as previously anticipated, the exercise witnessed some hitches in a few centres with some candidates unable to sit the examination, adding that these candidates would be rescheduled to sit the examination at a date to be announced later at no cost to them.
The examination body promised to look at all issues thrown up by the mock exercise and act accordingly for a better and enhanced exercise.
It explained that the introduction of the Mock-UTME by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board was aimed at providing the Board with the opportunity to assess innovations that would be used for the main examination as well as allow candidates to have hands-on experiences on the CBT environment.
The exercise, which was introduced over six years ago, has availed the Board a unique opportunity to trial innovations that have significantly improved on the Board’s ability to deliver world-class assessment exercise.
It would be recalled that before the conduct of the 2023 exercise, the Board had, in a statement, disclosed that it would be introducing some new measures that had never been used before and would want to use the opportunity of the mock exercise to assess their functionality.
JAMB, therefore, apologised to all candidates for any inconvenience they might have experienced on account of this, saying that this is part of a development process aimed at enhancing the Board’s efforts at improving the quality, security and sanctity of its services and as well as using same to herald the next phase of its transformational agenda.
“The exercise also gave the Board the rare opportunity of fine-tuning this process for better results.
“The Board expresses its appreciation to the candidates and their parents for their understanding and pledges to ensure that the system for which their sacrifice is made is perfected.
“The gains from the exercise cannot be quantified as the Board has taken note of the challenges thrown up and had, consequently, been better placed to deliver a seamless UTME exercise come April, 2023 in line with its projections,” it stated.
The Board said it continue to appeal to candidates and the general public for their understanding as it would not relent in its efforts to devise new and better ways of enhancing the quality of large-scale assessments in Nigeria.
