JAMB Moves To Introduce Critical Thinking, Life Skills In UTME

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has commenced moves to introduce life skills and critical thinking into the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), in a proposed reform aimed at making the nation’s tertiary admission test more responsive to the changing demands of higher education.

The Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Segun Aina, disclosed this on Wednesday in Abuja during the inauguration of a committee of stakeholders and experts tasked with developing a framework for integrating the skills into the UTME.

Aina said the proposed reform was necessary because the UTME primarily serves a ranking function among candidates who already possess O-Level qualifications and should therefore not simply duplicate the subject based assessments conducted by examination bodies such as the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examinations Council (NECO).

According to him, candidates sitting for the UTME have already been assessed in subject areas through their O-Level examinations.

“So ours is a ranking task. It’s not necessarily to test your subject matter expertise. So we feel for the UTME examination to be purely subject matter is a duplicity of effort of sorts,” Aina said.

He said JAMB was seeking to incorporate skills that candidates deploy in real life situations into the assessment process, adding that the board must determine whether the current examination format remains effective in predicting candidates’ performance at universities, polytechnics and colleges of 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?” he asked.

Aina noted that the UTME format had remained largely unchanged for more than three decades, stressing the need for JAMB to periodically review its assessment methods.

“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.

He explained that the committee was deliberately constituted with representatives from different segments of the education sector because JAMB could not independently determine the best approach without considering the views of stakeholders who would be affected by any reforms.

“We cannot be judges in our own matter. So we have assembled a team of stakeholders who are also experts in their own rights to join us in taking a look at this issue, to guide us and to make sure that any decision we take is one that is broadly acceptable to all the stakeholders who will be affected by these decisions,” Aina said.

He described the assignment as a national responsibility, saying the committee had been given an initial four week period to examine the proposal from a conceptual perspective.

“We will respond to the requests of the committee as they see fit, within reason. But they’ve been given an initial time of four weeks to look into this,” he said.

Also speaking at the event, the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, represented by the Technical Assistant to the Acting Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Mr Oni Adedeji, said the initiative was consistent with the Federal Government’s broader efforts to reform assessment in the education sector.

Alausa charged the committee to develop standardised, fair and transparent assessment modalities capable of measuring candidates’ analytical, logical and verbal reasoning abilities beyond the recall of subject content.

He said the committee would determine how the proposed components should be deployed, whether through a separate standardised examination or by embedding them within existing UTME subjects.

The minister said the reform was intended to create an assessment system that would measure not only what young Nigerians know but also how effectively they think, reason and solve problems.

“I strongly believe getting these right will shape how Nigeria evaluates readiness for tertiary education now and in years to come,” Alausa said.

He assured the committee of the ministry’s continued collaboration and support throughout the assignment.

The chairman of the committee, Prof. Boniface Nworgu of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, said the effectiveness of UTME should ultimately be measured by its ability to identify candidates with strong prospects of succeeding in tertiary education.

Nworgu explained that JAMB conducts a selection examination rather than a certificate examination, making it necessary for the test to accurately predict candidates’ potential for academic success.

“What JAMB is expected to do and what it is doing is to look at those measures that can help us to select the candidates that have the highest promise of succeeding in academic tasks at the tertiary education level,” he said.

He said the validity of the UTME must be continuously reviewed because the curriculum and skills requirements of tertiary institutions had changed considerably over the years.

According to him, the transition from the Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards (BMAS) to the Core Curriculum and Minimum Academic Standards (CCMAS) has placed greater emphasis on skills and critical thinking.

“The focus now is the area of skills and then critical thinking. So, what JAMB is trying to do is understandable from that perspective,” Nworgu said.

He stressed that the committee would not limit its recommendations strictly to life skills and critical thinking if its deliberations identified other measures capable of improving the predictive validity of the UTME.

“If in the course of our deliberations, we find out that there are other measures that can improve the predictive validity of the UTME, we’re certainly going to make appropriate recommendations,” he said.

Nworgu also said the committee would insist on evidence to determine whether any proposed changes to the UTME achieved their intended objectives.

He said any modified examination should be assessed against a clear baseline to establish whether the reform produced measurable improvements.

“If we have been using UTME for this number of years and we want to produce a modified UTME, so to speak, there must be evidence at the end of the day that this effort was on time, that we did not waste the taxpayers’ money doing what is beneficial to the society,” he said.

He assured JAMB that the committee would deliver on its assignment.

The committee comprises representatives and stakeholders from universities, examination bodies, professional regulatory councils, students’ groups, secondary schools and development organisations.

The committee is expected to submit its initial recommendations within four weeks. JAMB may thereafter proceed to a further stage involving assessment experts to develop or implement the details of any framework adopted.

The committee comprises representatives from universities, examination bodies, professional regulatory councils, secondary schools, students’ groups and development organisations