Abakaliki — six-man team from the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), commenced a survey and census of the over 900 primary schools in Ebonyi State.

The exercise aimed at ascertaining the number of pupils, teachers and non-teaching staff, as well as the condition of the schools in order to determine the level of intervention to the state's primary education programme, is expected to last for one week.

Speaking during the flag off ceremony of the exercise at the weekend in Abakaliki local government education authority, Nkwagu, the chairman of Ebonyi State Universal Basic Education Board (UBEB), Chief Austin Igwe Edeze, enjoined teachers and their head to actively participate in the exercise and to cooperate with the team so as to obtain authentic figure for the state.

He stressed that because of the free and compulsory education programme of the state, school enrolment has tripled, while there are high demands on teachers and existing infrastructure.

"The state government is very much alert to these problems. They have done a lot to meet up with these challenges. The Governor even before--- the commencement of the intervention funding system had already started building 300 new classroom blocksâ-oe and right now we are recruiting 2800 teachers as recently directed by the Governor," he said.

Chief Edeze stated that the state embraced education as the only way it could develop and overcome its backwardness, adding that while the federal government and other states were still thinking about whether to give assent to the UBE bill, Ebonyi had already signed hers into law.

He assured the census team of maximum security and hospitality of the people during the exercise and appealed to them to represent the state well in Abuja, as the exercise will offer them the opportunity of having direct contact with both the problems and the efforts of the state government towards the educational development of the people.

In his remarks, leader of the team, a deputy director in UBEC, Alhaji Wada Zakari, said the personnel audit of the teaching and non teaching staff of primary schools in the country was one of the statutory functions of the Commission.

He said the team would count the number of pupils, teachers and non-teachers in each schools and would also examine the credentials of the teachers to make sure that they have the needed qualification.

Alhaji Zakari noted that the exercise would help the Commission to make proper planning and to advise government appropriately.

E-9 Ministerial Review Meeting on EFA and MDGs

It is a worthwhile conference for education in Nigeria for a number of reasons. For example you see the major theme of the conference is assessment, National Assessment of Education Performance. We have been able to see how others are doing what they are, we can now compare and contrast to see where we are failing and where we are progressing so that when we go back home we will see how to implement such things. We are exchanging ideas, nobody is an Island and nobody has a monopoly of knowledge and that is why it is a worthwhile experience for us. In fact you will see from the programme that in a number of areas, they saw that Nigeria was progressing more than others, for example nomadic education was taken as one of our good examples of National Assessment and education of our children. From there we also see how India is talking about feeding the children in their schools, we can see how Bangladesh is improving women education, all sorts of things and these are areas we can learn and go back to Nigeria to implement too. You know that E9 is made up of countries that are highly populated and there are nine of them and each of them has over 100million people. So you can image that in China for example, the illiteracy level is still high , so we are not doing badly, we have learnt a lot from the conference.

NECO and credibility of its certificate.

It is obvious that NECO has come to stay and everybody knows this. The credibility of NECO is undoubted and now, we get request from all over the world asking for validation of certificate for one candidate or the other. I have gotten letters from Canada, United States of America (USA) from Germany and from other places asking us to validate the certificate that we give to students. They wanted to be sure whether they really got the certificate or not. And it has been a very pleasant thing replying such institutions. Let me tell you, there was a time the U.S embassy in Lagos rejected NECO certificate for visa and things like that and we had to go into it, and the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Nigeria went into it and told them that this is our certificate, there is nothing they could do. Of course and they said they didn't know that things like NECO was going on they finally accepted it. So we are using NECO everywhere, it is credible, it is acceptable and I don't blame tho se who initially were hesitant just because it was new and for every new thing there must be some resistance and that resistance through the grace of God we have been able to overcome. Even within Nigeria, you will recall that some people were saying that there should be no NECO. We thank God that they now realize that NECO has come to rescue the Nigerian child from whatever form of stagnation educationally that they have been suffering.

Is NECO of international standard?

Of course, that is what I am saying. It has been of international standard and is being accepted internationally. Let me tell you, there are a number of examination bodies in the world that have come together to form an association and one of them is called International Association for Education Assessment (IAEA). This is made up of all the examination bodies in the world and NECO is a member. So you can see that at least in terms of association we are accepted.

Even in Africa, we have what is called the AEAA that is Association for Education Assessment in Africa, NECO is a member. We have the Commonwealth chapter of Association of Examining and accreditation body, NECO is equally a member. In IAEA for example, I am a member of the executive. As the Registrar, I became a member of the Executive and in fact the only African NECO right now. Also in the AEAA, which is the African chapter of IAEA, I am a member of its executive, representing the western region of Africa. So we are accepted. Internationally NECO has come to stay, NECO is accepted, people are using NECO certificate and they will continue to use it.

Collapse of primary/junior secondary for nine years UBE and standard of education

The objective of the Universal Basic Education (UBE), which is what we call the nine-year programme, was to make sure that we reduce the level of illiteracy. The universal compulsory nine years free education programme is taking place not only in Nigeria but also in almost, all the E9 countries. The objective is mainly to achieve Education For All (EFA). EFA means that we want everybody to be literate however minimum, let them be able to read and write. So the issue of lowering the standard in going to secondary school does not arise. What we are saying is keep them in school, let them read for nine years and after that, they can go into the world of work. They must have acquired some skill; they must have acquired some knowledge that will make them find themselves suitable in the society. So it is not likely that the standard is lowered. But in any case, we are talking of admission, entrance examination into secondary school. We are saying education is a right for everybody.

It seems to me that entrance examination is a selective, or I want to say it is a system that kind of bar the progress of these children into school, let them go, let them be there let them have automatic admission, whatever it is let them go into it and by the end of nine years they will never be the same that is obvious because why is it that we are giving education to very few people, let everybody be involved, let everybody be educated then the problem will be reduced all over the world, not only in Nigeria. Our problems social problem, economic problem name it, will be reduced seriously so those are the objectives of Education For All (EFA).

Leakage of examination papers

The fact that our papers have not leaked is not our making; it is an act of God. In fact, the recent WAEC papers that leaked, you will know that for many years it has not happened to the organisation. Immediately the WAEC leakage happened, it became a signal to us that someday it is going to happen to us. So we have tightened security.

But let me tell you something in examination paper leakage because it varies. If it leaks through the printer, then you are in trouble, but you know when the students sit down in their examination hall and they write down questions for some people to go and answer for them and they bring it back into the hall, it is a form of leakage. Such thing happens to all examination bodies I will not say there is an exception.

There have been rumours; I can give you two or three examples of leakage of NECO papers. For example in Kaduna, the Federal Government College Principal for that year phoned me that our Agricultural Science question paper was on the street of Kaduna and we were going to take that subject on Monday and they gave us this information on Friday. I was baffled then we ran to Kaduna to see the woman and we collected the question papers from her but by the time we compared it with our own papers it was a fake, they were using it to make money from the children.

That is a typical example. But I think people have now discovered that these fake papers are rampant, that NECO examination papers cannot come out so they have refused to be buying fake papers! Again it is not our own making, it is the lord's making. We may be physically in charge but in the final analysis I think God is really doing the thing for us.

Level of student/school/staff involvement in malpractice?

We have seen such case where students, or the school authority in particular collude with the children to cheat and that is why I want to tell you one thing that is very important. Examination malpractice in any institution will be stopped if and only the school authority doesn't want it. If there is no crack in the walls the lizard cannot come in, I always say that. If there is no agreement between the school authority and the students it is not likely that examination malpractice will take place.

You see, some institutions just want to shine, as a result they believe that if the children pass, then they are shining, so they look for ways of committing examination malpractice, but we have detected some of them in some way. Let me give you a typical example, the spelling of book is b-o-o-k but if in trying to cheat everybody writes b-u-k or something like that, we will know that okay this school has cheated and we cancel the exam, that is one way. In the objective part, the objective has five option of A-B-C-D-E. Let's take a typical question where option B is the right answer but option A is wrong and you now discovered that in the whole school, everybody picked that wrong answer of A and nobody picked either C, D, or E in that school, then something is wrong, it means they were dictating the answers to them and unfortunately they gave them one wrong answer and that is enough for us to raise a signal and say, something is happening in that school. So these are some w ays by which we detect this malpractice.

The level of connivance between the school authorities and the candidates is high but let me give an exemption that in the federal government colleges with due respect, you hardly see such things. But in some of these private schools and public schools especially the rural schools, this incidence of malpractice is very rampant but we keep on catching them, we keep on dealing with them, cancelling their results and that is the best that we can do.

Getting high grades in Neco than WAEC

They say that but I don't know who gave people that impression! Let me tell you there is a process of saying you pass or fail. It is absolutely not true, you see the award committee of NECO is even members of WAEC, it is just not true, it is not easier and we have few cases, in my own house there was a time four children took NECO and all of them failed our English. So I don't know who gave them that impression but of course you see those who fail WAEC will say let us go and try NECO. But let them show you their results, you will see situations where somebody excels wonderfully in WAEC and woefully he performed in NECO. It may also be the other way round but in most cases, there is a lot of parity between WAEC and NECO.

On-line registration

For our website, a lot of things can be attributed to for the inefficiency of the Website. Most of the candidates who want to use doesn't know how to use it as such, the school authorities don't help matters too. The password for the school, some may not know it or they were given the wrong one, then the school number that is the identity for the school, if they get the wrong number, definitely it will not work and that is what we observed.

Automatic tertiary admission for exceptional students

That is like they are doing in China? But of course we are doing that already in Nigeria to an extent. Federal Government is offering scholarship to such candidates and it is automatic. Now, in terms of admission, it is better we place everybody on the same platform. Let them go in and prove it but telling them not to take examination may not be a good thing in Nigeria for now. But if with time and we are sure that our system is perfect which is not likely because we are human beings, then we can do such thing. But don't forget that from across the world, China is the first country to start examination. Historically, they started it with civil servants. Giving examination for employment of civil servant, for the promotion of civil servant, so China has gone very far in terms of examination. And in that place, hardly do they experience examination malpractice, am telling you. It is not necessarily a perfect world, but such a thing is not common to them.

Need for more examination bodies

I was waiting for that question. I am an advocate of more examination bodies and I will continue to clamour for it. It may not happen now, it may not even happen in my own lifetime but it is coming to pass. It is obvious when we have so many children to handle, within the next 10 years I bet you within the SSCE level, there will be about 4 to 5 million children who will be taking SSCE. Do you now say WAEC and NECO alone should be doing this type of thing? We should decentralize this thing; we should look for ways of making examinations an easy thing for our children. I am always saying it, I've written it and will continue to say. In fact, you very well that since 1977, Shogbetun Commission the National Examination Council (NECO) but it didn't come to pass until 1999, 22years after. Because that time they saw the problem of WAEC, now the problems are still mounting in terms of depth and width we are having more candidates to deal with, we are having more knowledge to test . So it is too much and it is time to add more examination bodies. When you listen to Pakistan, you will hear when they said they have 23 examination bodies, I heard it and I have heard it before about 2 or 3 years ago when we had a conference in Islamabad, I was the chairman of the session where Pakistan presented a paper and they told us that they have 23 examination bodies. Let me tell you, in Pakistan when they talk of Biology they have only one textbook for the whole country and I wont say that is okay, no we cannot use that model. In Britain, there are about eight examination bodies and the qualification centre in Britain coordinates these bodies. In South Africa, there are 12 bodies and the bodies are coordinated by Oma-Lucy, which is in charge of all examination bodies, there is nothing bad in it let us make it easy for children to be able to do examination by creating more examination bodies. It will ease our problem, it will reduce examination malpractice, and qual ity of the examinations will increase. But there are a number of question that people may not be able to answer, which is what will become of WAEC and NECO? Nothing but good things will become of them. What will become of the staffs? We will now have more people trained in the area of measurement and evaluation and then it will go down to the school system where assessment will be properly conducted by people, principals and everybody. It is a way of development well our redeemer will come one day, we are going to have it.

External influence in awarding neco certificate

There has not been a direct approach like that. But I have seen a situation where a highly placed person, a legislator wrote me a letter and said that the child did not sit for a particular paper but sat for Chemistry instead of Commerce and that I should release the result of that child in chemistry without any further delay. When I got the letter I was a little worried saying how could this be? So we went into the system and discovered that the child actually registered for Commerce but did not sit for Commerce. When I replied the letter to the legislator, I attached photocopy of the registration details, showing that the child registered for commerce.

Post - UME

Again, the fear of the unknown has beclouded the people. Nigerians don't know what the post - UME will imply. Those of us in the area of measurement know very well that as many rubicon as possible that children have to cross to be able to get to the final standard the better for them and the system. That is all the government is saying and of course we know that our system is full of malpractice. Alright if you cheated in the first sitting, let's see you cheat again in the eyes of all the university people. That is what government is saying and I think it is a very good one but the only objection I have to the initiative is that JAMB is not involved in the post-UME exercise other than sending the results to the and then admitting the children. Look I would have liked a situation where JAMB is allowed to organize the Post-UME exercise in conjunction with the universities, the universities will now supervise the exam thoroughly. The above is where I am a little worried but there is another way of doing it, after the screening let them go and do another initial test, even in their departments to be able to take the best candidates. But you know, we abuse things in Nigeria and the only thing is that we have to watch the way we do it. But am sure that with the calibre of vice chancellors and academics in our universities we will perfect the system with time.

Your dream for NECO

I am looking forward to the future where children will sit even in their homes and get our examinations done on the Internet so that the issue of cheating or not will not even happen. I am also looking forward to when we do what is called computer based testing. I am looking forward to a time when candidates will take exam today and the result will be released in two weeks time and a future where the children will see examination as a thing of joy and fun. When you see children going for the National Common Entrance Examination, come and see how happy they are, jumping as if it is fun, it is not a threat to them. I want a situation when our children will go for examination and come out of the hall saying, yes we have disgraced NECO in that they are going to pass the examination. That is my dream.