Lagos — A two-day summit recently organised by the House of Representatives Committee on Education in Abuja sought ways of combating examination malpractice, which, if unchecked may lead to total collapse of the education system. Juliana Taiwo reports

The summit became necessary, Chairman, House Committee on Education, Dr Ahmad Lawan said, because, "Education is a major and perhaps the singular tool for national development and a contaminated education system is, in most cases, an impediment to growth and development. Also the anti-corruption campaign of the present administration cannot have far reaching effects if we continue to allow education malpractice in our institutions of learning, breeding grounds of future leaders. The different sessions of the summit focussed on, 'Confronting Environmental Issues in Examination Malpractice - Societal and Professional Support', 'Accountability in Teaching-Learning Environment and Examination Malpractice', 'Confronting Legal Issues in Examination Malpractice - The Law, Prosecution and Judicial Process' and the Plenary, where communiqué was issued.

Lawan, in his opening remark at the summit with the theme: "Confronting the Scourge of Examination Malpractice as a Threat to the Nigerian Education System", added, "As partners in the various reforms introduced into the education sector by this administration, the House of Representatives Committee on Education with the support of the National Assembly and the various examination bodies and other stakeholders decided to confront the cankerworm called examination malpractice as our major contribution to the reform programmes.

According to him, "The massive breakdown of ethical standards and the pervasive culture of fraud and corruption have their roots in examination malpractice and to take such negative values and orientation into leadership and professional positions is fraught with disastrous consequences for the nation.

"The scope of examination malpractice is as large as the education sector, affecting all levels of education, including primary and post-primary education, tertiary and professional education, regulatory agencies, ministries, internal and external examination bodies", Lawan further noted.

He regretted that parents have constituted the biggest clog in the march towards educational excellence. Otherwise, how else can you explain a situation where some 23 children were in June 2006 arrested for writing adult education exit primary school examinations for their parents and relatives? Principals of schools, teachers, examiners, law enforcement agents, printers, gatemen, education inspectors, transporters, unemployed graduates and a host of others have turned examination malpractice into a huge business.

The Committee Chairman said, Examination malpractice remained one of the greatest challenges to the ongoing reforms in the education sector. Its consequences include the destruction of the moral foundation, which the nation needs dearly. Aside promoting mediocrity, examination malpractice promotes low professional ethics, leads to increased crime rate in all facets of the economy and leads to rejection of degrees and certificates in the international market."

Among others, the lack of accountability and teachers' inability to implement the curricula are some of the major reasons for examination malpractice. In a paper entitled, "Accountability, Teaching/Learning Environment and Examination Malpractice Prof. Garba Azare of the Department of Education, Bayero University, Kano said: "Teachers and even parents who understand learning differences can be more sympathetic with the frustration their students and children face in school. Teaching leads us to think about what makes a good teacher and it is easy to concentrate on what the teacher does. The true measure of a good teacher is how well and how deeply the students learn."

He stressed the "need to create a conducive learning environment as evaluation of teaching strategies is problematic because it hinges on the conduciveness of the learning environment. If we are sensitive to our students and the ways in which they learn, we can create a learning environment that is best suited for them". He submitted that irrespective of the underlying case of those involved, the principles of accountability demand that all allegations of examination malpractice need to be investigated.

"This is the only way to protect the integrity of qualifications, the only way to be fair to all involved in the examination and indeed the only way to be accountable," he said.

"Failure to properly investigate allegations of suspected examination malpractice in accordance with the regulations also constitutes malpractice. Our professionalism is incomplete if measures of accountability are not observed in our daily professional practices.

Also speaking on the same topic, Prof. Ademola Badmus, of the Faculty of Education, University of Benin, said steps should be taken to empower teachers for quality teaching and also involve radical changes in preparation and further professional development programme.

According to him, devoting inadequate time to learning was partly responsible for examination malpractice. "On examination of this issue, it was established that students from majority of public schools and certain category of private schools are indeed not empowered for effective learning and hence resort to examination malpractice "he said.

He lamented that "NISER and World Bank have just reported that graduates from our tertiary institutions are largely unemployed because of their ill preparations." He said teachers in the majority of public schools and a category of private institutions were not empowered for delivery of quality teaching, thus causing havoc to the education value system.

Adequate provision of facilities, equipment, instructional materials and teacher commitment, he said, were important for the empowerment of students for learning and teachers for teaching.

Badmus submitted that if education is well funded, and corrupt teachers officials, administrators and chief executives f educational agencies are sanctioned, then examination malpractice will be drastically reduced," he said.

Former Registrar of the National Business and Technical Examinations Board (NABTEB), Professor Olu Aina, alerted that, "Unless this national menace is tackled head on and swiftly too, it is capable of leading to the collapse of the entire education systems." Quoting the submission of Prof. Afolabi Ojo of the National Open University, Aina said: "The network of fraudulent practices by students in their desperate bid to outwit examination authorities would make international drug peddlers' antics to beat the law look like a child's play."

"We know about the pervasive prevalence of examination malpractice, we know the cheats, we know how and why they cheat, we have made laws to checkmate them and we know the process to beat them. The nation however, continues to sink deeper into cheating, defying the idiomatic expression that if too many people are involved in the act, it will be well done."

He also lamented that, "In the case of examination malpractice, the more people are involved, the more it is being well done as if it is a national call to duty in which everybody must be actively involved," he said.

The judicial system had not been too forthcoming in dealing with culprits. Aina said of the 328 cases recently reported to the police by four examination bodies, only 22 were taken to court and not a single one was successfully prosecuted. Due to the inability to successfully invoke the law in dealing with the scourge, he said, examination bodies have "painfully" resorted to cancellation of results, dismissal of their staff and de-accreditation of centres and blacklisting of others.

A member of the Senate Committee on Education, Prof Jubril Aminu said the National Assembly was working on a bill to set up a National Commission on Examination Malpractice, a step aimed at controlling the scourge holistically. He said the bill was already working its way through senate, which is also amending the Examination Malpractice Act of 1999.

"The commission cannot be a panacea and there will still be plenty of hard headed thinking to do, given the spread of education, hence malpractice, to every nook and corner," he said.

Aminu who was represented by Senator Farouk Bello, said: "Examination Malpractice portrays a poor competitive spirit which falsely elevates the individual to a level of recognised intellectual attainment. Releasing into circulation and employment, holders of fake or unearned qualifications, renders the human resources profile of a society defective.

"People who are holding jobs for which they are not qualified will not be honest in carrying out those jobs and will not be competent to carry out the jobs even in the unlikely event of their trying to be honest," he said, adding that it was not difficult to see how "this basically corrupt staffing of societal activities can multiply societal problems.

According to him, in the last 10 years alone, the West Africa Examinations Council (WAEC) had to cancel the results of 814,699 candidates in its May/June Examination.

"Considering the cost of buying the examination forms alone, this amounts to a waste of about N2.5 billion as well as the cost of preparing for the exams, we would be talking of nothing less than N20 billion down the drain each year on account of cancelled results" he added.

He said aside wastage of money; there was also wastage in the form of opportunity costs to the nation and society. "An evil like Examination Malpractice, which can destroy the system, will make it impossible to fight poverty" he said. The former Minister of Education said malpractice leads to irreversible loss of credibility, as the person indicted for it was unlikely to ever again rise to a position of trust and leadership.

"Where it is a country that becomes notorious for examination malpractice, nothing, and nothing will ever be believed from that country," he added. In order to fight the scourge, the first requirement was to ease those pressures that increased the temptations to cheat in examinations.

"To increase the working space, teaching facilities and the number and quality of the personnel, especially the teachers," he said could be part of the solutions to the problem.

According to him, adequate facilities and adequate attention can increase the confidence of the student and reduce the tendency to cheat.

He said: "there is need to keep the syllabus, the course system and the time table in regular review in order to ease the pressure on the student. It is sad for state governments to condone, let alone encourage, cheating by their children simply to win dubious Inter State competitions.

"Parents should not only ensure that the children receive adequate character training, they must be very firm against their children cheating no matter how couched", he added.

The experts in the communiqué listed learner-unfriendly school environment, severe shortage of available space for pupils and students to sit, as well as inadequate preparation of pupils and students for examination as causes of examination malpractice.

They therefore suggested that private sector and communities must get involved in building and maintaining leaner-friendly schools. They also recommended that more resources be made available, especially to public schools to reduce the pressure and that immediate action should be taken by the Minister of Education and Commissioners of Education in States among others to encourage private participation.

Lack of continued teacher support also contributes to examination malpractice. Teacher trainers were Federal and State Ministries of Education and other institutions were therefore called upon to organise regular, sustained and periodic in-service training programmes for teachers in Principles of Learning and teaching process, while personnel requirements at this level should be revisited by the National Commission on Colleges of Education (NCCE) and the National Universities Commission (NUC).

They also pointed out that arising from inadequacies of existing laws there is the need for an amendment to include all tertiary institutions and cover ICT and other new forms of examination malpractices as well as the establishment of an Examination Malpractice Commission and divest Federal High Court of its exclusive jurisdiction.

They called for the strengthening of enforcement mechanism through prompt arrest and prosecution of offenders within reasonable time frame in addition to a correctional/reformation centre. They also call for the involvement of community/vigilante groups and state ministries of education as monitors for purpose of providing credible evidence and security.

Participants further called on the National Council on Education (NCE) to direct the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to include Religious Studies (Christian and Islamic) as core subjects at all levels of our educational system in the ongoing review of the National Policy on Education (NPE). "This will inculcate the virtues of morality, fear of God, discipline, hardwork and honesty and thereby lead to reductions of examination malpractice."