The Registrar of Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is’haq Oloyede, has said the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) is for ranking and not an achievement test, adding that the purpose of an assessment determines its usage.
A statement Monday by JAMB’s Head of Public Affairs and Protocol, Dr Fabian Benjamin, said Oloyede stated this while fielding questions on a television programme, ‘Hot Seat’.
Oloyede made it clear that UTME is basically a placement test conducted to rank candidates seeking admissions to tertiary institutions in Nigeria and not necessarily a comprehensive assessment of knowledge or ability of candidates.
He said further that what differentiates UTME from WASSCE and SSCE is that WAEC and NECO examinations are done to test candidates’ cumulative knowledge while the UTME simply ranks candidates on the basis of performance.
He maintained that all experts in education are conscious of the fact that an achievement test is a criterion-referenced test whereby the pass mark is predetermined before the examination.
“On the other hand, the UTME is a norm-referenced test as the candidates are merely ranked on the basis of the set and there is no issue of pass or fail mark.
“This is because the examination simply ranks the candidates and draws the line at a point determined by vacancies,” he said.
Speaking further, Prof. Oloyede stated that the minimum admit table scores agreed upon at the 2022 annual policy meeting on admissions affected only the few institutions which proposed lower scores.
He added that every institution in the country had submitted their minimum admitable scores to the board prior to the meeting, adding that those were the thresholds which they would not go below for their respective admission process.
“By implication, all institutions that had submitted lower minimum admit table scores became duty-bound to adopt the agreed benchmark for their respective tiers of institution.”
