By Our Reporter
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has urged prospective candidates for its 2020 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) to intensify efforts and ensure they were captured at the ongoing National Identification Number (NIN) registration.
The board’s Head, Media and Information, Dr Fabian Benjamin, gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Lagos.
According to him, the call is to further encourage the candidates to do the needful ahead of the fast approaching period for the commencement of registration for the 2020 UTME any time soon.
“We want to further appeal and remind all prospective candidates on the need to get themselves registered centrally under the NIN scheme.
“They must consider this as compulsory if they intend to participate in the examination when the time comes.
“There is no other means of acquiring our registration documents for the examination except through the NIN and that is why we are calling on them now to intensify efforts in getting registered to avoid “had I known’’.
“No excuses will be entertained and that is the essence of this constant reminder so that nobody will be left out,’’ Benjamin told NAN.
He also appealed to parents to give their children and wards free hands in choosing their future career rather than impose theirs (parents) wishes on them.
According to him, often times children are under pressure to choose career just to satisfy the wish of their parents without considering the capacity of such children.
“Parents should stop forcing some particular careers on their children just because of some selfish reasons.
“They should be allowed to make their choices because this way, we get to see the best from them.
“Some after trying to satisfy the wish of their parents, end up not turning out well or use it positively.
“They end up taking to other vices because they are already feeling frustrated with life by not achieving that dream that they initially had,’’ he said.
Meanwhile, the Editorial Board of JAMBulletin has apologised to the public on its publication in the JAMBulletin of Monday, Oct. 28, 2019.
The board said the JAMBulletin, where a portion of the research innovation of a group of scholars was mutilated and given an erroneous impression that was carried by a section of the media with some news platforms having the caption: “UTME Candidates Won’t Score Zero, Even When Absent — JAMB’’.
“The research as presented by the scholars was on `Social Responsiveness in Applying Assessment Technicality: The Case of Standardisation of a Zero Score in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Nigeria.”
The board said the paper which was a product of experts in educational assessment seeks to explain the much-misunderstood concept of transformation of score standardisation, which is a technical procedure for transforming candidates’ raw scores in different subjects taken by each candidate to a common scale with uniform metric or units, which is the globally accepted procedure applied in scoring in a large scale norm-referenced test.
It said that to address the public outcry against what is termed un-merited score, particularly for those who sit for examination but do not attempt any question, the experts came up with an idea to continue to transform the zero score of those who attempt the examination questions but get them wrong.
It added that there would be no transformation for those whose zero score is from lack of attempt or absent, rather the Board has introduced the concept of nominal zero score that would be notated as zero asterisked (0*).
“Candidates who are absent from the examination would continue to be marked absent without any score.
“What this means is that all absentees will be marked absent and without any score and those who sit for the examination but did not attempt any question will have zero score.
“The presentation admitted that the general public hardly understands nor rationalises why scores should be transformed, and this generates some controversies and throws up all sorts of unfounded arguments as have been done by the recent publication.
“It questions the basis for such transformation. Ill-informed non-education professionals consider transformation of scores as arbitrary allocation of un-merited scores or irrational deduction and reduction of hard-earned scores.
“This, therefore, means that all absent candidates and those who sit for the examination and did not attempt any question will score zero and their zero score not transformed. (NAN)
