SIR: The suggestion made by one Muyiwa Idowu in The Nation of September 11, drew my attention. It was captioned ‘Still on 2014 WAEC result’. He recommended preliminary exams in SSII before WAEC examination as one solution to reduce, if not stop the recurring decimal of mass failures in the exam. This idea would have been feasible if Nigeria were a bit a better nation than it is now.
In Nigeria, what is practiced today is not fit to be called education. The educational system is in doldrums. This is because the love most Nigerians have for proper education can be likened to the to one that exists between a cat and mouse. It is not unusual to see fungus-like schools sprouting in every cranny of the nation. They are owned by business men who view the so called schools as another profit making enterprise. Like saprophytes, these schools carry out their job of educational decay religiously and efficiently. These proprietors most of whom are educated do not see beyond the need to make profit. As a result, they go to the extent of cooking their students result, there by misleading the ignorant parents and also the children who believe they have performed well and grow complacent. Some of these victims might realize too late that they have actually learnt nothing when they meet their counterparts from better schools.
Like the mythological Pandora’s box that did not stop at one evil, when such schools are faced with standard exams like WAEC or JAMB, they know that their half-baked students will inevitably fail, since it is garbage–in-garbage-out all the way, particularly as you cannot teach a man to use his left hand in old age. In the effort to salvage the school from the likely prospect of losing customers, they resort to all forms of vices, examination malpractice being the most prominent.
Even in the most unlikely as common entrance exams and junior WAEC , the rate of malpractice is appalling.
Going back to Muyiwa’s proposition, where are the assurances that preliminary exams in SSII would not be infected with the ravaging expo virus? What of mock examinations that are supposedly taken to prepare the students? What of that tentative feeling created by majority of the students that they would never be able to pass standard exams unaided?
Unless stringent measures are taken to properly accredit and monitor schools, and to curtail the already acute academic decadence, we might as well form a procession and drop wreaths at the sepulchre of quality education.
• Akunna James-Ibe,
Imo State.