JAMB calls for debate on cut-off scores

(By Fred Ezeh – ABUJA)

Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has stressed the need for education stakeholders to organise a debate where all education stakeholders would discuss the issues of cut-off scores for admissions into tertiary institutions.

The Board believed that such discussions would provide opportunity for the stakeholders to discuss and recognise the peculiarities of their institutions in admission processes.

JAMB Registrar, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, through a statement issued in Abuja yesterday by JAMB spokesman, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, requested that institutions be allowed to determine the kind of candidates they want based on their individual cut-off scores.

He argued that the uniformity of cut-off scores hitherto adopted by the federal government does not make sense, particularly when Colleges of Education and Polytechnics admit for NCE and Diplomas, while universities admits for Degrees. Yet, they are subjected to the same cut-offs.

The implication, according to JAMB, is that different universities would have different cut-off scores.

“For instance, if a Polytechnic like Yabatech wants 250 as cut-off and Gboko polytechnic in Benue State wants less than 200, they can go ahead and admit,” he said.

Oloyede said that institutions go for individual quality and not collective standards, believing that such will foster positive competition for the overall good of tertiary institutions.

The JAMB helmsman also expressed worry over opportunities in relation to social class.

“The rich can afford a foreign education, while the poor only have the opportunity of struggling for the scarce space [here]. Upon return, the foreign students easily gets integrated, while the poor that couldn’t afford the high cost of a foreign education are forever denied the opportunity of education,” he said.