Nigerian Newsday

Secondary schools principals and examiners in Taraba State found to be involved in abetting examination malpractices would henceforth be dismissed from service.

Commissioner of Education, Mr. Andrew Samari Fama stated this in Jalingo last week at the opening of a two-day workshop on the Campaign Against Examination Malpractice for Principals and Vice-Principals and Stakeholders in Education in Taraba State. The workshop was organised by All Nigeria Conference of Principals of Secondary School (ANCOPSS) Taraba State Chapter.

Mr. Lama identified causes of examination malpractice in school to include poor classroom management and poor attitude to teaching and learning by teachers and student which, he argued, resulted in cheating in examination.

In his address the National Chairman of Exam Ethics Project, Mr. Ike Onyechere said that not less than N50 million was lost to examination fraud in post primary final examinations alone in the past ten years, while WAEC cancelled 798, 500 results for May/June alone in the ten years period between 1994 and 2003.

Mr. Onyecheke said that any step taken to discourage examination malpractice was to make the students realise their true potentials and talents and to cultivate habits of hard work and high moral and ethical standard that would inturn contribute to the war against corruption and mismanagement, desecration of value system and economic terrorism.

He urged school principals to encourage teachers to read widely and develop good teaching methodogies to impact knowledge on their students adding that they should be able to complete the course content and carry out revision ahead of examination. "Teachers should also be able to give the students effective and functional guidance and counselling in order to discourage students from cheating during examination" he continued.

Earlier in his speech, the state president of All Nigerian Conference of Principals of Secondary Schools (ANCOPSS), Mr. Amos Wanmi said "Examination malpractice plants seeds of fraud and corruption in the fertile minds of students which leads to faulty education without character and learning and the end result leads to professional errors".

The ANCOPSS president said that the sum of N17 billion was lost to re-purchasing examination entry forms for retaking cancelled examination by examination bodies as a result of fraud in the last ten years.