No fewer than 45,000 students in Bauchi State sat for the Basic Education Certificate Examination, BECE in the 2020/2021 academic year.
Dr Aliyu Usman Tilde, Commissioner for Education Bauchi State disclosed this to reporters in his office on Wednesday.
The Commissioner said that the ministry recorded 15,000 cases of examination malpractice notably in the objective parts of the exams administered on students in the state.
He said that at the moment, the ministry neither sanctioned teachers involved nor the students ‘because none of the supervisors filed a formal complain about an incident of malpractice throughout the state,’ something that rendered the ministry helpless to hold people to account for their actions.
Dr Tilde however explained that there are video and audio evidence to corroborate the spate of exams malpractice recorded in the exams.
“The exams took place when the cabinet was dissolved and there were a lot of malpractices, especially in the multiple-choice questions.
The old order of children being dictated the answers took place. I even have videos to that effect,” the commissioner said.
Dr Tilde explained that because of the prevalence of exams malpractice recorded during the exams, the ministry decided to use the essay answers to assess and grade the students ‘because that is the only genuine answer that can come out of the child’s brain.’
He said that his ministry is on the verge of uploading the result to its portal for parents, guardians and students to access it.
However, the Commissioner explained that because the number of students that sat for exams is low, every child will be admitted into SS One.
“We are admitting virtually every child into SS one because the number that sat for BECE is just 52,000 out of which only 45,000 are from government-owned schools.
“We are concerned as far as admission is concerned. We are concerned with the latter category. We cannot admit people who are in private schools unless they request us to do so,” Dr Tilde said.
Dr Tilde faulted the apathy parents exhibited towards the education of their children in Bauchi state saying that it is disturbing enough to see that a parent cannot afford his child a 2B pencil for the exams, a situation that complicated marking the objective part of the exams because the system used for marking it can only recognize answers shaded with 2B pencil.
The Commissioner said that the ministry had to engage people to shade 600,000 scripts before they were marked, a development that delayed releasing the result at the beginning of the academic year he initiated.
