As Experts Chide NECO CBT Plan, Council Installs N500m Scanner

Amid heightened doubt on the readiness of schools in the country to cope with the new directives by the federal Ministry of Education to the National Examination Council NECO to make her exams Computer-based CBT, the council  has inaugurated  an N500million Scantron insight 1500C scanning Machine.

LEADERSHIP gathered that the Federal Ministry of Education is poised to make the council’s examinations computer based and already a consultant has been recommended to the Council by the Ministry even as experts doubted the readiness of the council and  schools; especially those in rural areas on computer literacy.

An Educational Technology Specialist Dr Mohammed Musa Farouk told LEADERSHIP that “ the Way the examination council is hurriedly packaged  to adopt computer based examination will cast doubt on the validity  and reliability of the examination.”

Dr Farouk explained that computer-based examinations must be planned from the curriculum design, the scheme of work, the instructional materials, and the methods  and techniques.

Another expert in educational measurements Mohammed Danlami said the reliability, validity and consistency of any test material must be subjected to trial test, thus the timing as proposed could not overcome such hurdles.

The council registrar Professor Ibrahim Dantani Wushishi   however said that the purchase of the  modern scanning machine was a step to improve the quality of the examination and speed up the time for the release of the council’s results .

He said the Scantron insight 1500C was  purchased at over N500million and  has the capacity to scan 250 sheets per minute or 15,000 sheets per hour unlike the previous equipment which took several days to perform the same exercise.

Wushishi disclosed that the new machine has the capacity to read any category of Optical Mark Recognition (OMR) document, adding that the machine’s performance would considerably reduce the number of days taken for the release of results after the last examination, which is presently fixed at 60 days.

The registrar assured that given more funds the examination body will purchase two more of such machines but assured that the purchase of the machines would not lead to sack of  staff members saying that “we will continue to need human factor in the management of the machine.”