The Federal Government has revealed that privately-owned Computer Based Test (CBT) centres and others belonging to public institutions would be fully deployed in the conduct of school-based Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) by next year.
Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa stated this on Tuesday after monitoring a pilot CBT SSCE conducted by National Examinations Council (NECO) at Sascon International School, Maitama in Abuja.
Alausa, who hailed NECO for the seamless conduct of the pilot phase of the CBT SSCE, said that future school-based SSCEs would be moved to designated CBT centres, rather than being held within schools.
“WAEC and NECO exams are school-based exams being conducted at their schools. No, we will move away from that. It is going to be like (the way) JAMB exams are being conducted at CBT centres. We have thousands of CBT centres across the nation.
“Those are the centres that we are going to use. It’s not a case that students do not have the facilities. Schools do not have the facilities. We have enough people. We also have to expand the value chain of these CBT centres. They should not just be to service JAMB alone.
“They should be able to service WAEC and NECO. The proprietors of these businesses, the owners of these businesses, have invested billions of Naira to set up these CBT centres. So we also have to help develop a new value chain in our economy.
“They will create jobs. You see a lot of computer, hardware, and software. And more importantly, we have entrepreneurs in Nigeria that are creating, developing these solutions. These are homegrown solutions. We should all be proud.
“Today, we should all stand tall and be proud of what we utilise. These are the kinds of opportunities that President Bola Tinubu is unleashing in every sector of his economy,” Alausa said.
He also disclosed a phased rollout of CBT format across all school exams starting with objective questions this year. “I’m a very happy person today that NECO has transited to CBT from paper-based. By November of this year, both NECO and WAEC objective exams will be full CBT.
“And by next year, 2026, all the essays and objective exams will be CBT. NECO and WAEC will be joining the league of JAMB. We are making significant progress,” he added.
Fielding questions from newsmen after monitoring the ongoing NECO exam alongside members of senate committee on education (basic and secondary) at Government Secondary School, Maitama, Registrar of NECO, Prof. Ibrahim Wushishi, expressed the readiness of the exam body for CBT.
He said: “NECO is ready as a professional body to conduct examinations using any medium.
“We may have challenges of infrastructure, that is obvious, but then that will not bog us down not to do it. There are facilities that will give us the opportunity to conduct CBT and we are good to go for that.
“We are all aware that there are certain difficult terrains across the countries where we will not be able to meet up with that, except there are exceptional infrastructures to give us the opportunity to do that.”
Prof. Wushishi called on state government to speed up provision of CBT infrastructures in their states, noting that these will highly support the process.
He added that NECO believes that the process will reduce a lot of issues relating to examination malpractice, improve the quality of the examination and consequently, the results and certificates.
