e-JAMB: Exams to hold in 17 days

The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) yesterday formally
launched the Computer Based Test (CBT) for 2013 Unified Tertiary
Matriculation Examination (UTME), in the country. With the
development, the body makes it mandatory that all exams must be
written on computers.

And because of the inadequacy ofcomputers, JAMB had decided to stagger
the exams that used to hold in one day to 17 straight days. Another
great innovation coming with the e-JAMB is that every candidate gets
his or her score immediately exam is concluded, while the final result
comes later.
Flagging off the ceremony in Abuja, the Minister of Education,
Professor Ruqqayatu Ahmed Rufa'i said the CBT would eliminate all
forms of examination maltpractices, ensure prompt delivery of raw
scores, eliminate all cases of incomplete result and reduce result
blackout.
The minister said the CBT: "Will be to the best interest of our
students in the country because itis a system whereby a student will
press a button and see his or her score after examination and we are
targeting at transforming the education sector between now and 2015
and part of the effort is to look into the quality and accessto
education."
The minister also highlighted two other options a student might choose
to use if he or she is not computer literate, saying: "If one cannot
see on a computer based he may be able to opt for paper pencil test or
dual (computer and paper) based test and we are going to allow that
between now and 2015 and it is our hope that by 2015 every students
must haveseen the advantage of using a computer."
On whether candidates would comply with the mode of the examination,
the Executive Secretary of JAMB, Professor Dibu Ojerinde, Said: "If we
continue to drag on like this, we will be left behind by the whole
world, other countries have started using it, why is Nigeria not doing
it, it means there must be a problem and we have to start from the
grass root, they must comply because we have tested about 600 students
in CHAMS, and they indicated their interest in using it."
The JAMB boss, while allaying fears of Nigerians over a possible
increase in the fee as a result of the new development and how
candidates in the rural areas would benefit from the scheme, given the
epileptic power supply in the country, as well as the fear that the
scheme could be hijackedby contractors, told journalists in an
interview that: "For now, the price remains as it used to be, we are
not increasing the price. "Secondly, on the issue of infrastructures,
we don't want to be monopolistic in our attitude.
We want to give it to private partners who are ready to work with us.
"For example, we have identified a number of tertiary institutions and
the minister of education just commissioned the computer based testing
of the University of Agriculture, Markudi.
"That place, we have 500 terminals and 500students can sitand take
exams at the same time."He also said "we have some other private
establishment like the CHAMS, where they have about one thousand
systems and Electronic Testing Company, ETC, which has eight centres
with a minimum of 2,000, computers percentres. "But we are not going
to do these examination on the same day for everybody.
We start on a day and end up after about 17 days, so that as you do
your exams, you get out. You get something telling you how much you
have performed. But the final result will come out later." He said
while the board would depend solely on private partnership for the
time being, it is making arrangement to build its own computer
centres, which was already in progress.
Source:sunonline