What Does 1.5M JAMB Failures Tell Us About How We Design Exams?

BOYE OSHINAGA

Faith was one of many students who wrote the JAMB exam for the second time running, with hopes of clinching just the right score for her dream course – Microbiology. But when she checked her result, she would not believe her eyes. At 19 years old, she was not just disappointing herself but her entire family. She wanted to escape from it all. In a few hours, she would be rushed to Kolak hospital in Ikorodu and die before getting there. The rat poison she had swallowed had taken her life.

Faith’s story is the only known suicide story from the recent JAMB debacle, but over a million student also wanted to sink into the earth when their exam scores were released or withheld. This was the most talked about issue in education circles in Nigeria for weeks. The JAMB registrar, a former Vice Chanceller, would later cry in front of TV and his organization throw its hands in the air in resignation saying on social media “Man proposes, God disposes”.

Why do we put so much emphasis on one national exam? Do exams like JAMB or WAEC really serve any purpose in improving or shaping our education system?

The Economics of Exams

The reality of this specific exam, JAMB, is that it serves merely as a filtering function for students to earn a place in a low-cost public university. The liberalisation of private-owned universities has not impacted the most important lever necessary to increase educational supply – cost.

The very idea of standardised entrance exams can be traced back to the post-World War II era, when psychometric testing gained global prominence. In the aftermath of the war, several Western nations—particularly the United States and the UK—sought efficient methods to absorb ex-military personnel into civilian roles, including academia. These tests were designed to identify individuals with high cognitive potential and aptitude, not necessarily to promote broad access. The logic was simple: screen thousands quickly, identify the sharpest minds, and channel them into elite training institutions or universities.

This model of selective assessment soon became embedded in educational systems across the world, especially in post-colonial states, where limited university slots needed to be allocated.

There are 72 Federal universities, 66 State universities and 159 private universities, as well as the National Open University, creating approximately 2.1 million university slots. If there was a hypothetical policy today that standardised quality and cost across all universities, almost every student will be guaranteed an admission immediately and JAMB will lose its relevance.

Bad” Exams

We need JAMB to lose its relevance, for a few reasons. Firstly, it is only propping up a degenerating university education that defies economic law because it is heavily subsidised by government. Instead of subsidising universities while their quality decline steadily, government should be subsidising students. Subsidising tertiary schools instead of students creates a market that demands high quality students while making no demand on the quality of schools.

Secondly, if exams were classified broadly as good or bad, JAMB and WAEC would be “bad” exams because they are a lagging indicators of student learning. By the time you are writing JAMB or WAEC, there’s only so much you can do to salvage your education.

As a side note, WAEC is “bad” for other reasons and needs to be replaced. It has earned a reputation for being fraught with cheating. As far back as when I wrote it, depending on your relationship with WAEC officials, a school’s students can go on a field day with opening textbooks. Today, students just use ChatGPT on their phones. Asides the cheating, the exam content itself tests skills at the lowest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy: remembering and understanding. This is a sharp contrast to the most important skills needed in the modern world which are higher up on Bloom’s Taxonomy: applying and analysing.

We Need More “Good” Exams

“Good” exams on the other hand are similar to health check results. They show you what you need to adjust.

We need more “good” exams that signal to us corrective measures we can take to improve children outcomes as they go forward in their educational journey.

The Common Entrance exams used to be like JAMB. Primary school leavers would study hard to get a top score to land a spot in a high-quality but low-cost State or Federal Government Model school. Everything changed when there was a proliferation of private schools matched with a policy that allowed them evaluate students independently. Today, of about 7 million children who finish from primary school annually, less than 100,000 take a Common Entrance exam.

Common Entrance did not have to be a “bad” exam but we made it so. The skills tested — reading, arithmetic, logic — are the same ones you would need if you were to develop a National Literacy Test for 10 year olds. The only skill missing is writing.

If Common Entrance exams were re-prioritized again, not as an entrance exam but as a exit exam whose data is used to develop and evaluate policy decisions, we would have less failure down the road.

In addition, if you had one pre-exam that helped us know how students were tracking towards a National Literacy Test a few years before they become 10 years old, we would be able to proactively rectify the loopholes in the entire education system.

Proactive or “good” exams can tell us a lot about teachers too. In the early 2000s in the US, Value Added Models (VAMs) were use to statistically isolate the impact that the work of a teacher had on a specific student or class of students. And teacher performance, statistically measured, was tied to promotions or bonuses for teachers and funding for schools. If there was one big idea on how to revitalise teaching and the education sector again, this is it.

Conclusion

We need to design assessments to spot learning gaps years before they calcify into failure. And we need to hold the system — not just the students — accountable. If we truly want an education system that uplifts rather than crushes potential, we must start where the problems start. Not at the end, but the very beginning.