The Registrar, National Examinations Council (NECO), Prof. Ibrahim Wushishi says the complexity of its examination may not allow for immediate migration from paper to Computer Based Test (CBT).
Wushishi was speaking during an interactive session with newsmen on key milestones achievement of the council in Abuja on Wednesday.
He said that by virtue of being the body conducting the largest numbers of examinations, migrating to CBT would take gradual steps.
“For the fact that NECO is the largest examination body by virtue of the number of its examinations we conduct, migrating to CBT is a critical issue.
“For JAMB, they are not examining candidates in so many subject areas so they find it very easy to embrace CBT in their examinations and do multiple choice in their exams.
“As far as NECO is concerned, if you look at the nature of our exams particularly in SSCE internal-for admissions into tertiary institutions, every year we examine students close to 1.5 million which is a large number.
“For this 1.5 million candidates, we examine these candidates in 76 different subjects and more than 150 different papers.
“So if we look at the complexity of these exams, particularly the essays where we have different papers, going CBT is something that experts need to sit and look at the nitty gritty of the exams,” he said .
Wushishi stated that before such a move will be taken, experts need to sit down to analyse the examination so as to ensure that standards of its exams in the areas of acceptability, reliability and credibility are maintained.
He added that international universities such as Lead university, and Birmingham City university in the UK wrote the council to use its results to apply for those institutions.
He said this showed the credibility and acceptance of its results to international institutions, hence would not rush in migrating to CBT.
“We have to do that gradually and there are some areas in our exams we could start with like the common entrance examination which is multiple choice based but then we must look at the nitty gritty of doing that,” he said.
Wushishi, while speaking on stemming examination malpractices in its upcoming SSCE internal examinations, said there was no fear of exam leakages as it had put in place sophisticated mechanisms to check malpractices.
“We are putting in place programmes for continuous sensitisation awareness. We are going to improve in the area of data protection to protect our candidates’ information.
“We are getting sophisticated identity to check malpractices as well as identify fishing sites to know if our papers leaked.
“We have no fears of any malpractices in the conduct of our exams coming up in June,” he said.
Reeling at the milestones of the council, he said that in its 25 years of existence, the council had discharged its responsibilities in line with the mandate of the organisation.
He also noted that so far the council had examined 34 million Nigerian youths as well as conducted trial testing exams for selection of best items in its examination.