Being the concluding part of the paper presented by Prof. Ibrahim A. Kolo, on a Bill for an Act for the establishment of the Nigerian National Educational (Tertiary) Quality Assurance Agency and Other Related Matters, at the National Assembly.
For the Education System below the tertiary level (Basic and Secondary) in Nigeria, the FME, since, has a National Quality Assurance Policy into which the Inspectorate Department of the Ministry was supposed to transit. Unfortunately as with many other policies in the FME, the Educational Quality Assurance Policy has either been misconstrued as a threat to the Inspectorate, Basic and Secondary Education Departments, or the policy-will to implement it independently has not been forthcoming. Conceptually, Educational Quality Assurance is the more contemporary and international best practice for facilitating input, output and outcome expectations for engendering quality in the education system.
As a departure from the traditional inspection and supervision approach for setting and attempting to implement and enforcing standards, Quality Assurance Approach is based more on facilitating stakeholder collaborations for partnerships for the realization of set standards in the education system. At the tertiary level, the idea of Educational Quality Assurance is to drive Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards (BMAS) and Accreditation Exercises more from the perspective of stakeholders’ engagement and institutional peer review mechanisms. Unfortunately also, the key Regulatory Bodies of tertiary education in Nigeria (NUC; NCCE; and NBTE) conduct the business of BMAS and Accreditation more from the perspective of exclusive prescriptive yardsticks in which they are the sole determinants of standards and quality of tertiary education programmes.
At the onset of these Regulatory Bodies, such an approach to ensuring (not assuring) compliance to standards and quality of academic programmes in tertiary institutions was probably more usable because of the relatively fewer public tertiary institutions and the limitation of their proprietorships to regional and national governments. Now with many more varieties of proprietors of tertiary institutions (States, Private and Faith Based), many more legally recognized Professional Regulatory Bodies, as well as the larger Private Sector and Industries to contend with in terms of very dynamic standards and quality expected of outputs and outcomes of our tertiary institutions, the Quality Assurance Approach (as against the Exclusive Accreditation Approach) has become more imperative.
A simple example is the Private Business and Industry Sectors which are supposed to absorb more of the graduates of our tertiary institutions, and yet which are not part of (or at best marginalized from)) determining academic content, standards and programmes accreditation. The consequence, despite the labeling of programmes accreditation status into Full, Interim or Denied, is the critical concern that the tertiary institutions are still producing more of graduates categorised as unemployable or for whom vacancies do not exist. While some have suggested a policy turn-around for making the Regulatory Bodies set BMAS and conduct Accreditation more from Stakeholder Involvement and Institutional Peer Review approaches, going the whole hug of collapsing the three Bodies (NUC, NCCE and NBTE) into one Quality Assurance Agency for the purpose would be more sustainable. The approach of collapsing the Regulatory Bodies into one was happily canvassed by the Executive Secretary of NBTE at the Senate Round Table and I am sure this should be considered in the proposed legislative reforms.
A Bill for strengthening the Act of the establishment and mandate of JAMB
In the over three decades of the Establishment of JAMB to conduct a joint entrance examination for the regulation, placement and harmonization of admission of candidates into envisaged numerous number of tertiary institutions in Nigeria, the body and process has had to contend with a multiplicity of challenges ranging from inside unethical practices, to external distrusts and disregard by tertiary institutions it was supposed to serve.
Desperate parents and crooked cartels also had their turn to feast on JAMB through all manners of illegal malpractices and forgeries. At a point in time, there were calls for the scrapping of JAMB. But the Examination Body trudged on to continue to discharge its mandate by contending with all manners of challenges, including unfounded allegations. Matters got to a head when the universities mounted an onslaught to pass a vote of no confidence on JAMB by having the authorities to approve Post JAMB Examinations for candidates. With the coming of the incumbent Registrar, events began to take a turn around with the introduction of various measures to curb malpractices and to boost the confidence of the public in the essence of JAMB.
Such measures have so far included staggered and multiple question formats to curb cheating, use of extra security measures to stem incidences of violence and impersonation that were rearing their heads in examination centres, use of external monitors to keep compromising officials in check, and more recently the deployment information and communication technology to curb question paper leakages. Many who had been benefitting from the previous scams which were giving JAMB a bad name have since never been happy with these developments and would not relent.
Given the essence of a standardized and professionally conducted entrance examination as international best practices for tertiary institutions admission, it is pertinent that further legislative measures are adopted in the form of empowering JAMB in the context of extra mechanisms for checking and sanctioning perpetrators of unethical practices in the conduct of examinations; providing for the exclusive use of appropriate technologies for the conduct of the JAMB Examinations; making all admissions (for regular, part time and even the open and distance learning modes) subject to JAMB Examinations; and empowering the body to expand its scope to conduct aptitude tests for admission into academic and professional programmes as well as for pre-career professional enrolments. These measures will go a long way to strengthening not just the sanctity of JAMB Examinations, but will also enhance the standard of tertiary education that has taken a nose dive over the years in Nigeria as well as bolstering the confidence of stakeholders in JAMB.
There is no doubt that the Legislative Agenda the Senate Committee on Tertiary Institutions and TETFund has set for itself requires visionary insights and “out of the box thinking” approaches to decisions to be made to engender Relevance, Competitiveness and Sustainability which are hoped to enhance positive change in the sub-sector.
The focus of the Legislative Agenda should, therefore, be to enhance Quality, Access and Relevance which have become the bane of tertiary education in contemporary Nigeria. It is also important for the Senate Committee to be mindful of Martins Oloja’s conclusion in The Guardian of Saturday 11th June 2016 that “Better Universities” and by implication all tertiary institutions indeed will only “lead to Nigerian Exceptionalism.”
Prof. Kolo is former Vice Chancellor, IBB University, Lapai, Niger state
