BREAKING NEWS, Education, Featured
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The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board releases new guidelines for admission into universities and other tertiary institution based on point system option
| By Anayo Ezugwu | Jul 18, 2016 @ 01:00 GMT |
THE Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has released its new guidelines for the 2016 admissions’ process. It is now going to use a method described as the point system option, which was adopted after an extensive one-week meeting which the exam body had with universities and other tertiary institutions’ administrators in the country.
The guidelines contained in a statement published on JAMB’s website stated that universities are going to charge fees for screening candidates for admission through the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, and direct entry students.
According to the JAMB, the new method uses a point system to offer provisional admission to candidates. “Before a candidate can be considered for screening, he/she must have been offered a provisional admission by JAMB. The JAMB admission checker portal is going to be opened soon for this process, so praying is all you can do now,” JAMB said.
The second process, it said, was the point system where admission would depend on the point tally of the candidate. “JAMB’s provisional admission no longer makes much sense this year as your points tally will decide your faith. The points are evenly spread out between your O’ Level and JAMB results to provide a level-playing field for all.
“In the first case, any candidate who submits only one result which contains his/her relevant subjects already has 10 points. The exam could be NECO, WASSCE, November/December WASSCE etc, but any candidate who has two sittings only gets 2 points. So this means that candidates with only one result are at an advantage but only just.”
“Next point grades fell into the O’ Level grades where each grade would have its equivalent point; A=6 marks, B=4 marks, C=3 marks, so the better the candidates’ grades, the better his or her chances of securing admission this year. The next point is the UTME scores where each score range has its equivalent point which can be summarised thus, 180-200=20-23 marks, 200-250=24-33 points, 251-300=34-43, 300-400=44-60 points,” JAMB explained.
Giving a breakdown, JAMB explained that each category would contain five JAMB results per point added. For example a candidate with 180-185 gets 20 points, while a candidate with 186-190 gets 21 points. JAMB added that the point system for direct entry would be released soon.
JAMB stated that fees would still be charged for screening which would replace the Post UTME test. JAMB also emphasised that catchment and educationally less-developed state would still be used for admission into the nation’s tertiary institutions.
JAMB said, “Merit contains 45 per cent of the total candidates for a particular course, Catchment contains 35 percent and ELDS and staff lists contains the rest. Cut off marks will be released by the institutions this year in the form of points and not marks. If a school declares its cut off mark for Medicine as 90 points and JAMB grants a candidate with 250 a provisional admission but his/her total point’s falls short of the 90 points, then he/she will lose the admission. So the provisional admission is just a means to an end, not the end in itself.”
However, the federal ministry of education and other stakeholders in the tertiary education sub-sector have agreed on N2,500 as the fee for Post-UTME screening. This is contained in a statement issued by Michael Faborode, secretary-general, Association of Vice-Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, AVCNU, on Wednesday, July 6.
Faborode said the agreement was reached after a deliberation by officials of the ministry, federal universities, polytechnics and colleges of education. The secretary-general said while it was agreed that the post-UTME screening should be sustained following the scrapping of the Computer Based Test, CBT.
“From the statement made by the Permanent Secretary, Folashade Yemi-Esan at the meeting, there is no objection to screening by universities as long as it is not another CBT. She agreed that universities should advertise and the maximum fee that should be charged for the screening should be N2,500 – bank charges inclusive.”
Meanwhile, the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, has kicked against the federal government’s directive for tertiary institutions to scrap the Post-UTME, for admission of candidates for the 2016/2017 academic session, saying the quality of tertiary education in the country could improve if the institutions are allowed to regulate their students’ admission process.
Biodun Ogunyemi, ASUU President, said such freedom would enhance the quality of education. The ASUU boss told the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, that such directive encroached on the autonomy of the institutions. “I think government should give these institutions the chance to regulate themselves. They should decide for themselves, the process they dim fit to admit their students. The Senate of universities, for example, should decide on the process they want to use in selecting candidates. We do not think its right for government to decide the method of screening of the candidates. Indeed, we want to attain some level of sanity and quality in the system.”
He added that government could only come into the process by putting in place the necessary guidelines as part of their oversight functions. According to him, it may not also be easy for institutions that had already collected money for the conduct of the post-UTME or screening in whatever guise to refund such money. He added that this was because such money could have been diverted to other purposes.
Ogunyemi noted that most universities were under-funded and therefore, might have used some of the money to attend to urgent needs of the institution. “Some of the arguments raised in this entire episode are that universities or tertiary institutions were using the conduct of such examination to make money. But the truth is, these institutions are poorly funded. If universities, for example, are properly funded, will the vice-chancellors be looking for other means of making money?
“In the last seven months, university workers have been receiving incomplete salaries, that is, the disbursement of funds for payment of salaries has always been inadequate. When situations like this arise, the managements will not be left with any choice than to look inwards and seek means of meeting such needs. And one of such strategies is by conducting such examination.”
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