FG to scrap common entrance, introduce student tracking system

The federal government has announced plans to phase out the junior secondary school common entrance examination and introduce a learner identification number to track pupils throughout their academic journey.

Tunji Alausa, the minister of education disclosed this on Saturday during an interactive session with journalists in Lagos.

He said the common entrance examination would be replaced with a continuous assessment system that reflects pupils’ performance from primary school and follows them even when they transfer between schools.

“It will be replaced by Continuous Assessment, CA. The CA will reflect the performance of the pupil from primary one and even if a pupil is transferring from one school to another, he will take it along to his new school,” the minister said.

Alausa explained that the reforms aim to improve access to education and address gaps in the transition from primary to secondary school.

He noted that Nigeria has over 50,000 public primary schools with more than 23 million pupils, but only slightly above 3 million proceed to junior secondary school.

“We have over 50,000 public primary schools in the country with over 23 million pupils.

“However, from statistics available to us, only a little over 3 million among those pupils move to the junior secondary school level in our public schools, then the question is, where are the about 20 million not enrolled in our public secondary schools?” he queried.

The minister attributed the gap largely to limited access, calling on state governments to build more schools to accommodate growing enrolment.

He added that the proposed Learner Identification Number would enable authorities to monitor pupils’ progress and identify those who drop out of school.

“To also follow up on our pupils and students, we are introducing the Learner Identification Number right from primary school level. If somebody is expected to be in JSS class one and he is not there, we will be able to know the reason why he is not continuing his education,” he said.

Alausa also revealed plans to revive the school feeding programme to boost enrolment, noting that it may be moved to the federal ministry of education for better monitoring.