Stakeholders in the Lagos State education sector rose from a meeting during the week, with a decision to put an end to re-sit examination for primary six pupils sitting for placement into public secondary schools in the state.
The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, Mr. Adesina Odeyemi, who disclosed this, said, “It is very important to impress it on parents and teachers to groom their children properly for the examination to ensure success as re-sits of the failed papers have been cancelled.”
He said that experience has shown that in the past, most of those who were supposed to re-write the examination failed to show up after government had invested heavily in human and material resources for re-conducting it.
He, therefore, stressed that henceforth, any student who failed the placement test would have to wait till the following year. Odeyemi announced that “the annual Placement Test, which qualifies pupils for placement into our secondary schools, will come up July, 2017.
All pupils in our public and private schools must attend the 6th class (primary 6) and attain the minimum age of 10 years to be qualified to write the test.”
He noted that the test would be compulsory for all Primary Six students in all public and private primary schools in Lagos State, whether they wanted to attend public secondary schools or not, because it would be the only evidence of their having acquired the First School Leaving Certificate of Education.
On the need to curb examination malpractices, the permanent secretary said that the state had deployed Optical Mark Recognition machines to emboss pictures of the candidates on the registration cards to prevent sitting by proxy.
He added that it would also randomised questions and answers to prevent cheating and also brand question papers per candidate to discourage swapping. The state Ministry of Education, he noted, had directed head teachers of all public primary schools in the state to ensure that no primary six pupil would be left out of the registration for the test. He also advised proprietors of all private schools and parents to endeavor to register their pupils within the stipulated time.
“The idea of coming to the designated centres on the day of the examination with unregistered pupils claiming that the process was not able to be completed and pleading for time to complete it thereafter will no longer be tolerated,” he said.
