The University of Birmingham and Lead City University have initiated discussions with the National Examinations Council (NECO) regarding the use of its examination results for accepting international students from Nigeria.
The Registrar of the National Examinations Council (NECO), Professor Ibrahim Wushishi, disclosed this during an interactive session with education correspondents in Abuja.
Wushishi explained that these universities reached out to NECO to assess the credibility of its examinations for potential use in their admissions processes.
He noted that NECO has already met the requirements set by Birmingham City University, while the process with Lead University is still ongoing.
Additionally, the NECO registrar discussed the council’s efforts towards digitalization and the potential shift to Computer-Based Testing (CBT).
He acknowledged the complexity of this transition for NECO examinations, highlighting that nearly 1.5 million students take exams in 76 different subjects and over 150 different papers annually for admissions into tertiary institutions.
Prof. Wushishi emphasised that while the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) successfully implements CBT primarily for multiple-choice formats, NECO faces unique challenges due to the diverse nature of its exams.
Therefore, he stressed the need to address these challenges thoroughly before fully adopting CBT for NECO examinations.
“For the fact that NECO is the largest examination body by virtue of the number of examinations we conduct, migrating to CBT is a critical issue,” Wushishi said.
“For JAMB, they are not examining candidates in so many subject areas, so they find it very easy to embrace CBT in their examinations and do multiple choice in their exams.
“As far as NECO is concerned, if you look at the nature of our exams, particularly in SSCE internal for admissions into tertiary institutions, every year we examine students close to 1.5 million, which is a large number.
“For these 1.5 million candidates, we examine them in 76 different subjects and more than 150 different papers.
“So if we look at the complexity of these exams, particularly the essays where we have different papers, going to CBT is something that experts need to sit down and look at the nitty gritty of the exams.
The University of Birmingham and Lead City University have initiated discussions with the National Examinations Council (NECO) regarding the use of its examination results for accepting international students from Nigeria.
The Registrar of the National Examinations Council (NECO), Professor Ibrahim Wushishi, disclosed this during an interactive session with education correspondents in Abuja.
Wushishi explained that these universities reached out to NECO to assess the credibility of its examinations for potential use in their admissions processes.
He noted that NECO has already met the requirements set by Birmingham City University, while the process with Lead University is still ongoing.
Additionally, the NECO registrar discussed the council’s efforts towards digitalization and the potential shift to Computer-Based Testing (CBT).
He acknowledged the complexity of this transition for NECO examinations, highlighting that nearly 1.5 million students take exams in 76 different subjects and over 150 different papers annually for admissions into tertiary institutions.
Prof. Wushishi emphasised that while the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) successfully implements CBT primarily for multiple-choice formats, NECO faces unique challenges due to the diverse nature of its exams.
Therefore, he stressed the need to address these challenges thoroughly before fully adopting CBT for NECO examinations.
“For the fact that NECO is the largest examination body by virtue of the number of examinations we conduct, migrating to CBT is a critical issue,” Wushishi said.
“For JAMB, they are not examining candidates in so many subject areas, so they find it very easy to embrace CBT in their examinations and do multiple choice in their exams.
“As far as NECO is concerned, if you look at the nature of our exams, particularly in SSCE internal for admissions into tertiary institutions, every year we examine students close to 1.5 million, which is a large number.
“For these 1.5 million candidates, we examine them in 76 different subjects and more than 150 different papers.
“So if we look at the complexity of these exams, particularly the essays where we have different papers, going to CBT is something that experts need to sit down and look at the nitty gritty of the exams.
“We have to do that gradually, and there are some areas in our exams we could start with, like the common entrance examination, which is multiple choice-based, but then we must look at the nitty-gritty of doing that.”
Concerning examination malpractices in its upcoming SSCE internal examinations, the NECO boss stated that there was no fear of exam leaks because sophisticated mechanisms to prevent malpractices had been put in place.
“We are putting in place programmes for continuous sensitisation awareness. We are going to improve in the area of data protection to protect our candidates’ information.
“We are getting sophisticated identities to check malpractices as well as identify fishing sites to know if our papers leaked.
“We have no fears of any malpractices in the conduct of our exams coming up in June,” he said.