JAMB moves to inject life skills, critical thinking into UTME
By Uji A.Iliyasu, Abuja
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has inaugurated a committee to review the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) and develop a framework for incorporating life skills and critical thinking into the admission test.
The move is aimed at making the UTME more relevant to the changing demands of tertiary education and improving its ability to predict candidates’ prospects of succeeding in universities, polytechnics and colleges of education.
JAMB Registrar, Prof. Segun Aina, disclosed this on Wednesday in Abuja while inaugurating the committee, comprising education experts, examination bodies, professional regulatory councils, secondary schools, students’ groups and development organisations.
Aina said the UTME, which primarily performs a ranking and selection function among candidates who already possess O-Level qualifications, should not simply duplicate the subject-based assessments conducted by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examinations Council (NECO).
He said candidates had already demonstrated their subject knowledge through their O-Level examinations, making it necessary for JAMB to examine other competencies relevant to tertiary education.
According to him, the board must determine whether the methods currently used to select candidates remain valid predictors of success in higher education.
“Are the methods that we are employing to check and predict who will do well in the university or the polytechnic or the college of education, are they still valid? Are they good enough?” Aina asked.
He noted that the UTME format had remained largely unchanged for more than three decades, stressing that the examination needed periodic review to remain relevant.
“The biggest room in the house is the room for improvement. So we want the committee to help us take a look at this,” he said.
Aina said the committee had been given an initial four weeks to examine the proposal from a conceptual perspective, adding that JAMB would consider further requests from the panel within reasonable limits.
Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, represented by his Technical Assistant to the Acting Permanent Secretary, Mr Oni Adedeji, said the initiative was consistent with ongoing efforts by the Federal Government to reform assessment across the education sector.
He charged the committee to develop standardised, fair and transparent assessment modalities capable of measuring candidates’ analytical, logical and verbal reasoning abilities beyond recall of subject content.
Alausa said the panel would also determine whether the proposed skills should be assessed through a separate standardised examination or embedded in existing UTME subjects.
He said the reform was intended to assess not only what candidates knew, but how effectively they could think, reason and solve problems.
Chairman of the committee, Prof. Boniface Nworgu of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, said the effectiveness of UTME should be measured by its ability to identify candidates with the greatest promise of succeeding in tertiary education.
Nworgu said JAMB conducts a selection examination rather than a certificate examination, making predictive validity central to its role.
He said the transition in university curricula from the Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards (BMAS) to the Core Curriculum and Minimum Academic Standards (CCMAS) had increased the emphasis on skills and critical thinking.
Nworgu said the committee would consider other measures beyond life skills and critical thinking if its deliberations showed that they could improve the predictive validity of UTME.
He also pledged that the panel would rely on evidence and establish a basis for determining whether any proposed changes achieved their intended objectives.
The committee includes representatives of the University of Nigeria, Bayero University, University of Lagos, National Universities Commission, WAEC, NABTEB, NBTE, NCCE, TRCN, professional regulatory bodies, NUT, NANS and UNDP, among others.
The committee is expected to submit its initial recommendations within four weeks, after which JAMB may engage assessment experts to develop or implement the details of any adopted framework.