JAMB introduces use of scratch card for on-line registration
THE Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has discarded with the old method of manual registration for its examinations and has adopted the on-line registration, which is the system currently in vogue worldwide. Consequently, beginning from Monday this week thousands of candidates who will be registering for the 2006/2007 Monotechnics, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education (MPCE) examination are to obtain scratch cards of N3,000 each with which they will go on-line and fill the registration form.
JAMB’s Director of Computer Services Mr. Abdulraheem Adeniran disclosed the adoption of this electronic innovation last week during a meeting with representatives of banks involved in the sales of the Board’s application documents.
According to him, the need to give quality services to the candidates in terms of their having unfettered access to all the necessary information as well as making it possible for JAMB to be sending useful information to candidates through e-mail made the use of electronic registration imperative, adding that it will also make registration less cumbersome since candidates have only one form to fill electronically instead of the old method whereby they were required to fill the OMR Form, Form 03, Envelope Card and Photo card.
He said further that “the beauty of the e-registration is that the problems of collation, sorting and handling of forms have been eliminated.”
Although JAMB’s brochure and syllabus will be issued to each candidate upon purchase of scratch card at designated sales centres such as banks, NIPOST, JAMB’s headquarters and zonal offices, Adeniran disclosed that candidates can also access the JAMB’s brochure on the internet, adding that various courses of study available in the different institutions as well as the list of the institutions available within a catchment area have been fed into the system.
Two important facts were taken into consideration by the Board while perfecting strategies toward ensuring an effective use of the on-line registration system. The need to reduce cases of impersonation and the need to cater for the interests of those who are not yet computer literate.
The method adopted to reduce examination malpractice, according to Adeniran, is that each candidate is required to either scan a printed passport photograph or download a digital copy which is to be fixed to the form. In addition, to this, a slip, containing the particulars and photograph of the candidate, will be printed out, and which will be the passport to the examination hall, adding that the examination supervisor will also have a copy of the slip for confirming the candidates identity.
For making it easier for candidates, especially those who are not computer literate, Adeniran said that a copy of the registration form can first be downloaded and be filled manually by the candidate in order to ensure that the correct information is supplied before going on-line, explaining that the electronic registration does not allow wrong information to be supplied.Asked whether the introduction of the e-registration will not jeopardise the chances of candidates in rural areas who may not have access to cyber café, Adeniran said that JAMB’s survey earlier carried out showed that there is no local government area in the country which does not have access to internet facility.
JAMB is starting the use of electronic registration with the MPCE examination as a test case because it is a low entry examination. The calculation is that the impact of any difficulty that might arise from the use of this system would be minimal and would have been solved before the Universities Matriculation Examination (UME), which is a higher entry one.
http://www.vanguardngr.com/articles/2002/features/education/edu216032006.html
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