Candidates who offered the subject at Surulere Senior Secondary School, Alagbado, Lagos and Tomia Secondary School, Alagbado, Lagos wrote the papers at Alakuko Police Station.
Olakunle Olafioye
The 2018 Senior School Certificate Examination conducted by the National Examination Council, NECO, came to an end on Monday, July 9, but many candidates who took part in the examination have been deeply worried about the examination, considering the hitches that dogged the conduct of the exercise.
READ ALSO: Unity Schools: 80,000 write NECO entrance examination
The lapses which characterised the conduct of the examination became more pronounced on Thursday, June 7, the day scheduled for the English Language examination. According to the timetable released by the examination body, Papers 2 and 3 comprising essay, comprehension, summary and the objective questions were billed to last for two hours and 45 minutes while Paper 4 (Test of Orals) was billed to last for 45 minutes.
While Papers II and III were billed to commence by 10.00 am and last till 12: 45 with Paper IV slated to hold between 1. 00 pm and 1.45 pm, Sunday Sun gathered the papers did not commence until 4.00 pm in most centres in Lagos.
The development was said to have thrown many parents and guardians into panic as their children and wards failed to return home from their various examination centres when they expected them to return. A parent, Mrs. Folake Arowolo, told Sunday Sun that she was shocked when she called home to give instruction to her son only to realise that he was yet to return from the examination centre some minutes to 6 o’clock.
“I was held up in traffic so I decided to call to inform him on what to do but his phone was not available. I later called a neighbour, who informed me that my son was yet to return home from school. I couldn’t believe it because I knew the papers for the day were supposed to end around 2.00 pm.
“I eventually got through to one of his teachers who informed me that the examination did not start until some minutes before 4.00 pm,” she said.
Some students who spoke to Sunday Sun claimed that they were not given enough time to answer the questions, with many alleging they were given less than two hours for papers that were originally billed for three hours altogether.
Arowolo deplored the development, noting that it was capable of impacting negatively on the performance of the candidates who sat for the examination. “You can’t force the students to write an examination under such condition and expect the best from them,” she noted.
While many parents continued to express their anger over the delays which marred the conduct of the English Language, report filtered in that the examination had been cancelled and rescheduled for Saturday, June 30. This however turned out to be a rumour as students who thronged various centres for papers were turned back.
A Lagos teacher who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that they fell for the rumour of the rescheduled English Language examination at the school, where she works because of the belief that only a rewrite of the examination could guarantee fairness to the candidates.
“I invigilated the examination and I am convinced that the condition under which the English Language examination was written was totally against any acceptable standard. It was obvious that the zeal with which many of the students intended to write the examination initially had waned by the time the papers arrived after more than five hours when the paper ought to have started,” she lamented.
If the delay experienced before writing the English Language examination was worrisome, some of the candidates who sat for Papers III & IV of Technical Drawing billed for Monday, July 2 said they went through a more harrowing experience before they could write the papers.
Candidates who offered the subject at Surulere Senior Secondary School, Alagbado, Lagos and Tomia Secondary School, Alagbado, Lagos wrote the papers at Alakuko Police Station.
One of the students affected by the development told revealed that after waiting for more than one hour when the paper ought to have commenced, they were informed that the paper would no longer hold in their school.
He said: “We were told that it would hold at the custodian, which was a distance from the school. We were however surprised when we were taken to Alakuko Police Station for the paper. By the time we got to the station, there were students from other schools around who also came to write the paper at the police station.”
It was further learnt that the papers which were scheduled to be written between 10.00 am and 12.45 were also delayed as a result to the sudden change of venues.
In a telephone interview with Sunday Sun, the spokesperson of the examination body, Azeez Sanni, blamed the delay encountered on June 7 on logistic problem.
“Due to logistic challenges, the English Language paper which was supposed to start by 10.00 was rescheduled for 2.00 pm, not 4.00 pm. When we realized that it was not possible to commence the papers at 10.00 we quickly sent out information that the paper would start by 2pm,” he said, adding that there was no cause for worry since the examination was held.
When asked about the July 2, Technical Drawing examination, which some students claimed they wrote at a police station, Sanni requested that he should be allowed to find out the true situation from the Lagos office of the examination body.
“What actually happened was that one of the ad-hoc staff that was involved in the examination was the of the cause of the problem. NECO engages ad-hoc staff who are Secondary School teachers, to supervise and conduct the exams. From our preliminary investigation it was the ad-hoc staff that did that. We have started our investigation internally to ensure that this type of thing does not repeat itself.
We don’t condone such misconduct. Since the person involved is an ad-hoc staff we don’t have direct control, but I can assure you that we have mechanisms for checking such misconducts in nearest future,” he said.