Crumbling students’ performance in public examination

By Adelanwa Adeniyi

The records of poor performance of students in public examinations remains a national embarrassment that demands deep thought, understanding and a decisive action in order to get out of the mess.

                 The reports of poor performance of students at the West African Examination Council (WAEC), National Examination Council (NECO) and the Joint Admission and Matriculation Examination Board (JAMB) suggest that the nation is sitting on both social and economic time bomb, if noting drastic is done to arrest the situation.

                

Based on the statistics, the number of candidates securing admission into Nigeria universities remains very low consequently, the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), that is the proportion of young people aged 19-24 is only seven percent (7%) in Nigeria, compared with south Africa’s eighteen percent (18%) with a difference of  eleven percent (11%). This analysis indicates that Nigeria’s   participation rate in universities education is very low.

                 However, one of the cardinal factors that enhance student’s poor academic performance could be because of their age. A lot of students are very young before they enter university. Some of them left secondary school at age 12. People do not believe maturity is needful. Hence, some of these students entered universities with forged age declaration. Further, the numbers of subjects these students are offering in various schools are too cumbersome due to this cordial factor; some of them are unable to cope with all these subjects as expected.

                 Also, incompetence of some of the teachers teaching these students affected their academic success to an extent. Meanwhile, some of the teachers do not have sufficient background to cope with the number of students in the various classes and the many subjects.

                Finally, parents also have a lot to contribute towards their children academics success. Actually, some parents will not see their children before leaving for work in the morning and they would have being asleep when they come back in the evening. This can be seen as lack of commitment on the part of the parent as regards to their children academic success.