Olaolu Oladipo 
Former Vice-Chancellors of two first generation universities in the country have waded into the reported below par outcome of the recently conducted United Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) with a verdict that it is a reflection of the general decay in the nation’s education sector.
Those who spoke to Saturday Telegraph on the issue in separate chats were a former Vice Chancellor of University of Ibadan, Professor Abel Olayinka and his counterpart at the University of Lagos, Professor Rahman Bello.
The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board had last Friday released the 2025 UTME results, reflecting the third-worst outcome recorded in the country since 2016.
This year’s outcome is perhaps the worst performance over the 10-year period that occurred in 2021 when 87.2 percent of the candidates scored below 200 mark.
About 1.14 million candidates obtained scores below 200 (out of 400) in 2021.
The second worst performance occurred in 2020 when 79.2 percent of the candidates for the UTME exam that year, representing 1.54 million, obtained scores below 200.
Commenting on the development, Olayinka and Bello agreed that the trend has been consistently recurring just as they lamented that it would impact negatively on the products that the various tertiaries would turn out
“I do not think that there has been mass failure this year from the figures that one has seen. If anything, the results for this year are generally consistent with those for previous years,” Olayinka said.
Though, he argued that JAMB has continued to argue that the UTME is not an Assessment Test but a Ranking Test, he lamented that “In reality, many of the candidates who scored between 140 and 199 out of 400 marks will still be offered admission into some universities.”
On the way out, Olayinka said, “On the other hand, there may be an urgent need to improve the quality of education at both the primary and secondary school levels.
“Many of those schools do not have the full complement of teaching staff. Those on the ground are poorly motivated. The infrastructural facilities are largely inadequate.
“Teachers should be well motivated. A reading culture should be improved as part of efforts to increase literacy rate generally beyond passing examinations. Schools should have well stocked libraries.
“These things would require concerted efforts by the pupils themselves, the teachers, and school proprietors both in the public and the private sectors.”
He stated that most of the tertiary institutions would still find enough candidates that meet their minimum requirements for admission.
Commenting on the development, Professor Bello who echoed the same sentiment with Olayinka, said, “I don’t think the performance is peculiar to this year. The trend has been the same.
“JAMB has been improving on its mode of examination and plugging all loopholes for cheating and fraud. It (result) actually depicts the general deplorable output of our secondary level of education. I don’t believe it has to do with the CBT mode of examination.
“Improve learning at the secondary level of education and plug all loopholes in examination malpractices at that level.
“The entrants into the tertiary level of education get poorer, placing the onus on that system to have to do extra work in polishing the poor inputs to get them to the minimally acceptable level.
“Meaning the quality of products from the tertiary level will continue to get lower as a result of the intake.”
