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How adequate is 2 weeks WAEC preparation for exit students?

WASSCE 2022: WAEC worried over rogue websites activities

Great uncertainty lies in Nigeria’s education sector about the performance of students in the fast approaching WAEC examinations especially given the lock-down of schools stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Nigerian Government has pronounced the resumption of students in exit classes – JSS 3 and SSS 3 on Monday, August 4, 2020 in preparation for their West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and National Examination Council (NECO) examinations.

The big question surrounds the adequacy of the two weeks WAEC preparation as well as short time lines between other examinations such as NECO/SSCE (October 5-November 18) and Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) for JSS3 students (August 24-September 7, 2020).

This question is especially pertinent considering that in the rather unconducive atmosphere of the lock-down, preparation and studying for such a technical and big-time examination might have been considerably constrained.

Moreover, the lack of adequate internet and online teaching platforms for Nigerian students has undoubtedly limited a huge amount of productivity that could have been achieved at home.

According to a Diagnostic report released in November 2019 by the World Bank Group, Nigeria’s digital economy was ranked 143rd of 176 countries worldwide (15th regionally) in 2017 based on the ICT Development Index (IDI).

The statistics on internet constraint within the country is buttressed by Huawei’s Technology report that Nigeria’s 2019 ranking of 75 out of 79, cumulates to a low score of 27 out of 120 in the Global Connectivity Index (GCI). This reflects limited broadband subscription and internet usage.

This issue of limited online access is asides the poor electricity outages that persisted without any significant improvement during the months of lock-down, thereby worsening the conducive study environment at home.

A recent United States Agency for International Development (USAID) report released in April 2020 revealed that Nigeria has potential to generate 12,522 megawatts (MW) of electric power from existing plants but often times, only 4,000 MW is generated which is highly insufficient with just 45% access rate for both rural and urban areas.

 

 

This gloomy statistics on the reality of internet and data access facilities could have significantly hampered the conduciveness, focus and ample time required for studying.

A recent report from BusinessDay recognised that most parents had signed up their wards for apprenticeship training to avoid idleness given the lock-down measures. .

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Some training centres continued online lectures all through the lock-down period giving students who enrolled for lectures a platform to prepare towards the exam.

Mrs Adams Adebola, from the Charity branch of WAEC Centre at Oshodi, Lagos State says she expects a good performance from her students.

“I am not sure we had a limited time frame for preparation because we never stopped our classes. Classes have been online since May during the lock-down and physical classes resumed last week’’ Mrs Adams said.

Oluwayemisi Oloriade, the Principal of Wellspring College in Lagos state, says “for serious students, the Covid-19 pandemic has created enough time for preparation and success in their upcoming examinations. Otherwise, those who failed to maximise the opportunity to study at home with the excuse of waiting for schools to resume, are not ready to excel in their studies”.

Not every student was privileged to have access to online education during the lock-down indicating they might not be as prepared as the other student who did.

Esther and Kelechi, two SS3 students in Lagos state told Businessday that their level of preparedness towards the coming exams is 5 on a scale of ten as it was difficult to concentrate and read properly during the lock-down and they are hopeful that the two weeks preparation would help them achieve a good performance.

In 2017, the proportion of Nigerian students that had 5 credits including Mathematics and English increased to 56.5% from 52.3% in 2016. However, this overall performance dropped to 48.2% in 2018.

Nonetheless, 2019 saw the peak performance in the last four years with 64.2% pass rate. This brings the average performance of Nigerian students in WASSCE to 55.3% in the last four years.

This shows the pass rate of Nigerian students in WAEC examinations to be on middle ground, indicating a tendency to swerve either direction by getting better or worse grades this year 2020.

Already, there are a lot of discouraging statistics about Nigeria’s education sector. According to NBS, in terms of education levels, an average of 50.5% of Nigerians lack formal education or less than primary education with males dominating at 66.17% compared to 34.72% females.

Whereas primary education averages 34.1% comprising 41.3% males and 26.9% females, secondary and post-secondary education are much lower at 19.5% and 11.9% respectively.

Nonetheless, in responding to the level of preparedness of WAEC students, Mr Mahmoud, a teacher in a unity school in Kwara State Ilorin, says “even though the students could not access online classes during the lock-down, most of the students communicated with me during the lock-down through phone calls, so I am certain they will perform well in the forthcoming WAEC examinations”.