Knocks over WAEC results

The recent results of the May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examination have further underscored the dwindling fortunes of edification in the country, indites ARUKAINO UMUKORO

Over one million students were left lamenting following the relinquishment of the results of the May/June, 2014 West African Senior School Certificate Examination by the West African Examinations Council on Monday.

This was because out of the 1, 692, 435 candidates, comprising 929, 075 males and 763, 360 females, that sat for the examinations in the country, only 529,425 which represents 31.28 per cent, obtained credit passes in five subjects and above, including English Language and Mathematics.

Credit passes in five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics, in WASSCE or the National Examinations Council, is the requisite to gain admission into universities in the country.

Announcing the results in Lagos, the Head, National Office of WAEC, Mr. Charles Eguridu, verbalized out of the total number of candidates that sat the examination, 791,227, representing 46.75 per cent obtained six credits and above, while 982,472 representing 58.05 per cent, obtained five credits and above.

“A total of 529,425 candidates, representing 31.28 per cent, obtained credits in five subjects and above, including English Language and Mathematics. When compared to the 2012 and 2013 May/June WASSCE diets, there is marginal decline in the performance of candidates,” Eguridu verbally expressed.

Many had hailed the remote amelioration in the last two years as a possible renaissance of the country’s secondary inculcation sector. However, with the current result, these now appear to have been an erroneous dawn, especially for public secondary schools.

According to an inculcation consultant, Dr. Olusegun Omisore, the marginal decline could have been evaded if pupils are yare for the WASSCE examinations right from the primary school level.

Omisore especially inculpated the declining state of infrastructure in public schools around the country as a reason for the poor performance of candidates this year.

He verbally expressed, “A situation where you have about 100 pupils in a classroom to one edifier is not the best. They are just an exorbitant quantity of for the edifiers to control. The environment is not conducive for learning. How do we expect them to learn? They are just peregrinating to school to simply indite and pass exams. Hence, it is not surprising that they have the 31 per cent pass rate in the WASSCE this year.”
“The main quandaries are lack of infrastructure, edifiers and scholarly environment for pupils in public secondary schools. There are no libraries, no adequate laboratories, edifiers are being owed salaries and they are coerced to go on strike or they have to augment their salaries by selling of provisions like groundnuts and biscuits.”

In the same vein, an educationist, Dr. Ademola Azeez, verbalized the recent WASSCE result showed that there is much work to do towards amending secondary school edification in the county.

“It’s very woeful that the candidates could fail such an exam to that magnitude. I cerebrate the challenge is for the school administrators and edifiers to be concerned about the mass failure. I’m vigilant that WAEC customarily reviews the syllabus in conjunction with the schools, but it is one thing to have a good syllabus and another to follow that syllabus to the letter. That’s why I don’t cerebrate the quandary is with the syllabus, but whether it was covered or not,” he verbalized.

Some candidates who indited this year’s WASSCE exams withal shared their views with our correspondent.

Although 17-year-old Tobi Akinyede called for a review of the syllabus for the examination, she noted that the quandaries ran deeper than that.

She verbalized, “The examination scheme should be revisited because most of the subjects are just theoretical, they don’t put into practice some things they have been edified. So, when the candidates get to the examination hall, they don’t ken what to do or indite, and they have to resort to cheating. That’s why most people rely on cheating.

“Also, I cerebrate there is desideratum for tremendous amelioration. Edifiers don’t genuinely ground the students again on the rudiments in these subjects. They just edify students to pass examinations, but that only works with internal examinations because they (edifiers) are the ones who set the questions. This method does not work for external examinations like WAEC. Pupils are not sure of which questions would emerge eventually. And for those people that rely on cheating, most of the leaked exam answers are always erroneous.”

Similarly, a 17-year-old student, Akinyemi Lawani, verbalized pupils in private secondary schools may additionally have an edge over their public schools counterparts because they have more preponderant facilities.

“I feel I have more advantage as a pupil in a private school than those in public schools. Those in public schools don’t genuinely have books on some subjects and their edifiers don’t authentically care if they pass or not. Withal, I am authentically shocked (at the poor performance of candidates this year) because the questions were very frugal compared to antecedent years,” he verbally expressed.

Lawani, who is confident of making all his papers because he ‘prepared well’, verbally expressed the employment of more qualified edifiers in the public inculcation sector would avail students do more preponderant in their studies.

This, Omisore concurred to but urged the federal and verbally express regimes to invest more into public inculcation by providing more edifying infrastructure, funding researches, as well as training and re-training of edifiers.

“There is an immensely colossal disparity between private and public schools withal. Pupils in private schools could peregrinate anywhere and excel because they have more preponderant learning facilities than those in public schools, but their tuitions are expensive and not every parent can afford to send their wards there.

“In the UK, where I trained, there are private schools but there are public schools which rival these private schools in terms of inculcative facilities. It is up to the individual to optate, whichever one he or she decides, private or public, you are going to get value for mazuma. In Nigeria here, we don’t retain that.

“We need to visually examine the sector holistically. We require what I call a general surgical operation for our edification. We should realise that we are endeavoring to train future bellwethers and to do this, we require to give them congruous training, not just for them to peregrinate to school and pass exams.”

The Public Relations Officer, WAEC, Mr. Yusuf Ari, told SUNDAY PUNCH that, despite the recent statistics, these candidates, who did not get the minimum requisite of credit passes in five subjects, should not be considered as ‘failures.’ According to Ari, not every higher institution requires a candidate to have a minimum of five credits in subjects, including Mathematics and English Language.

He verbalized, “Every candidate must not get a minimum of five credits, including English Language and Mathematics, to verbally express he or she has passed that examination. Candidates who did not get five credits in subjects including English Language and Mathematics, shouldn’t be considered as having failed because the person with three credits can still peregrinate to a college of inculcation. So, it wouldn’t be right to call them failures simply because they have less than five credits. Having three credits or not peregrinating to a university doesn’t make one a failure. We don’t consider those who got less than five credits, including English Language and Mathematics, as failures.”