The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, is reviewing the structure of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, to determine how critical thinking, life skills and other competencies can be incorporated into the test used to select candidates for tertiary education.
The review is part of efforts to make UTME a more effective measure of candidates’ readiness for university, polytechnic and college of education programmes, rather than largely repeating the subject-based assessments already conducted at the secondary-school level.
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Segun Aina, gave the indication in Abuja on Wednesday during the inauguration of a committee of education stakeholders and experts to develop a framework for the proposed reform.
Aina said the board was questioning whether the existing UTME format remained adequate for its selection function.
He explained that candidates taking UTME had already undergone subject-based assessments through their O-Level examinations conducted by bodies such as the West African Examinations Council, WAEC, and the National Examinations Council, NECO.
The registrar noted that JAMB’s primary responsibility was to rank candidates for admission, making it necessary to consider whether the examination should continue to focus predominantly on subject-matter knowledge.
“So ours is a ranking task. It’s not necessarily to test your subject matter expertise. So we feel for the UTME examination to be purely subject matter is a duplicity of effort of sorts,” he said.
According to him, the proposed review would examine whether the current methods used to predict candidates’ likely performance in tertiary institutions were still valid, particularly in an education environment where the skills required of students were changing.
“Are the methods that we are employing to check and predict who will do well in the university or the polytechnic or the college of education, are they still valid? Are they good enough?” Aina asked.
He noted that the UTME format had remained largely unchanged for more than three decades, stressing that the review was intended to identify areas requiring improvement.
“The biggest room in the house is the room for improvement. So we want the committee to help us take a look at this,” he said.
Aina said JAMB deliberately brought together representatives from different parts of the education system to ensure that the review reflected the perspectives of institutions, regulators, examination bodies, teachers and students.
“We cannot be judges in our own matter. So we have assembled a team of stakeholders who are also experts in their own rights to join us in taking a look at this issue, to guide us and to make sure that any decision we take is one that is broadly acceptable to all the stakeholders who will be affected by these decisions,” he said.
He said the committee had been given an initial four-week period to examine the proposal conceptually, adding that its duration could be extended if necessary.
“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,” Aina said.
Also speaking, the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, represented by the Technical Assistant to the Acting Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Mr Oni Adedeji, said the initiative aligned with ongoing efforts by the Federal Government to reform assessment across the education sector.
Alausa charged the committee to develop assessment modalities that would be standardised, fair and transparent, while measuring candidates’ analytical, logical and verbal reasoning abilities beyond the recall of subject content.
He said the committee would determine how the proposed competencies could be assessed, including whether they should be tested separately or embedded within existing UTME subjects.
“I strongly believe getting these rights will shape how Nigeria evaluates readiness for tertiary education now and in years to come,” the minister said.
Chairman of the committee, Prof. Boniface Nworgu of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, said the effectiveness of UTME should be assessed by its ability to identify candidates with the greatest potential to succeed in tertiary academic work.
Nworgu stressed that JAMB conducts a selection examination, rather than a certificate examination, making the predictive validity of UTME central to its purpose.
“What JAMB is expected to do and what it is doing is to look at those measures that can help us to select the candidates that have the highest promise of succeeding in academic tasks at the tertiary education level,” he said.
He said changes in tertiary curricula, including the transition from the Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards, BMAS, to the Core Curriculum and Minimum Academic Standards, CCMAS, had increased the emphasis on skills and critical thinking.
“The focus now is the area of skills and then critical thinking. So, what JAMB is trying to do is understandable from that perspective,” Nworgu said.
He added that the committee would consider other possible measures that could strengthen the predictive validity of UTME if they emerged from its deliberations.
Nworgu also said the committee would insist on evidence to establish whether any changes introduced into the examination achieved their intended objectives.
“If we have been using UTME for this number of years and we want to produce a modified UTME, so to speak, there must be evidence at the end of the day that this effort was on time, that we did not waste the taxpayers’ money doing what is beneficial to the society,” he said.
The committee comprises representatives from universities, examination bodies, professional regulatory councils, secondary schools, students’ groups and development organisations.
It is expected to submit its initial recommendations within four weeks, after which JAMB may engage assessment experts to develop and implement the details of any framework adopted from the review.
