It's often said that when the cause of a problem is known, the issue is half solved. I would like us to discuss for the benefit of all and particularly, the Jamb candidates - the subject "why do Nigerian students fail Jamb exams?". Please kindly make your voice heard as this may save a soul.

many student are nt ready 2 read,they believe in fake ruins.i posted UTME seminar some weeks ago they were asking rubish cos they've paid 4 fake ruins

willis2k9:

many student are nt ready 2 read,they believe in fake ruins.i posted UTME seminar some weeks ago they were asking rubish cos they've paid 4 fake ruins

Don't mind the kids of this generation and i am seriously praying that Jamb also goes with the NECO option in monitoring exams. During our time it was a great honor to pass your exams with your personal effort.

@poster

I think your question is wrong. Do you want to tell me that all the students fail the exam. The issue is that you focus on those that didn't reach up to the required mark. No one fails jamb exam. It all depends on the cut off mark of the school in which one is seeking for admission.

Black_Revo:

Don't mind the kids of this generation

I'm tired of hearing those statements. If your own generation are all law abiding citizens, why does the country still in a ruin. Or is it also manage by kids?

students only fail jamb.but jamb has failed more than a generation of people.if not,tell me the main reason for jamb in the first place.and tell me a country where such exists.JAMB--a political tool.
look at the 'bigger' picture

is becasue they paid no attention to all their studys like illetrate

If people fail that much over a very long period of time, then, the JAMB itself should be questioned. Personally, I feel Jamb is not a true test of knowledge. People who read hard for it fail or pass by a little over 200 and those who pass even to over 300 have been proved to know nothing when they get to universities. Have you ever wondered how someone who passed WAEC with good grades fail JAMB and yet, they pass SAT, TOEFL, A-LEVELS (ok, that was going overboard) ? My sugestion is scrap JAMB. OR, let it be proctered and handled by prometrics for example. OR better yet, let the universities set a form of entrance exams for the students. Some universities( not sure of now) do not even trust the Jamb results themselves.

Kids of this generation are not ready to study.

They fail jamb because e hard gan.

That said I passed it in flying colors on the first try. It cost me Only 500 naira. my folks knew something wasn't right but there was no proof. Haha. Damn. . I miss naija mehn. Anything goes in that place.

JAMB is not a pass/fail exam, it's a cutoff exam. Students 'fail' because the university slots available aren't enough to go round. The solution is to encourage the setting up of more private universities. Case closed.

JAMB is a failed test. Like someone mentioned above, I know students who passed WAEC, NECO and A'LEVELS(which is very hard) yet fail JAMB. I think it should be scrapped and Universities should use their own admission criteria. So many people have been JAMB victims for too long. I remember when a guy wailing about how it was his 8th time writing JAMB that isnt right, we have to get our young people into University because the youths of today are the leaders of tomorrow.

POOR SCORES IN JAMB OR ANY OF SUCH EXAMS IS DUE TO MENTAL LAZINESS.SIMPLY PUT WE DON`T READ AND OR STUDY ANY MORE.HOW MANY TIMES HAVE U SEEN SOME PPLE`S COMMENT ON THIS FORUM THAT "THE POST IS TOO LONG I CAN`T(COULDN`T) READ IT"THE PROLIFERATION OF SATELITE STATIONS(24HRS TV),INTERNET, PHONES & EVEN FOREIGN FOOTBALL FOLLOWERSHIP HAS GREATLY REDUCE THE TIME & ZEAL FOR ACADEMIC WORK.(AM NOT SAYING THE ABOVE MENTIONED ARE BAD).
ALSO NOT FORGETING THE FACT THAT THE SOCIETY IN GENERAL DOES NOT ENCOURAGE ACADEMIC WORK(ECONOMIC PURSUIT).

Why they are all failing abi?
1. Premiership
2.Championship
3. Swagga
4. Hennessy
5. Yahooyahoo
6. Music
7. Facebook + Nairaland,
8. Yaradua

deco2come:

@poster
I'm tired of hearing those statements. If your own generation are all law abiding citizens, why does the country still in a ruin. Or is it also manage by kids?

Brother hope we are here to discuss and not to fight? My generation was not perfect neither was those before or after it as we have today. Don't take the meaning of my statements at face value, i am only trying to say that the rate of failure is alarming compared to past generations. These kids of nowadays are supposed to be more brilliant than us for the same age group but we have the opposite today.

The failure rate my brother is related to the adjustment of the cut-off point so we cannot excuse that when talking about the performance of students in relation to Jamb.

Seun:

JAMB is not a pass/fail exam, it's a cutoff exam. Students 'fail' because the university slots available aren't enough to go round. The solution is to encourage the setting up of more private universities. Case closed.

SEUN,I BEG TO DISAGREE WITH U.DID U SEE THE REPORT ON D LAST NECO RESULT?98.2% COULD NOT MAKE 5 CREDIT(MATHS & ENGLISH INCLUSIVE).PLS VISIT ANY HIGHER INSTITUTION IN NIGERIA & INTERACT WITH THE STUDENT,U WILL BE DAZED.I WAS IN ABRAKA OVER THE WEEK FOR THEIR MATRIC.GUESS WHAT, SOME "JAMBITE"
COULD NOT MENTION 5 COUNTRIES IN AFRICA.ITS THAT BAD.

JAMB is as hard as you make it or see it.

First: Study hard and be prepared for the questions
Two: Know the technique to answer JAMB questions.

In the sciences such as Chemistry and physics, the first few pages are filled with calculations where as the last pages are straight answer questions. If you are not aware, you will start from the begining wasting time on calculation you can solve ordinarily because you are nervous.

But if you answer the straightforward questions first, you would have could down and gained some time before coming to the calc. part. BTW if biology is part of your subjects, run through it before going to chemistry and physics. You will sure get more than half the time saved for chemistry and physics.

JAMB is not hard we make it appear hard.

JAMB ENGLISH - use ISLET technique in the reading and comprehension part which wastes most of the time.  Read your questions first before answering.

Finally forget about runs because most of the runs men do not know anything.

I know someone who cannot speak good english and still she does runs for people in JAMB and waec. How do you expect them to pass?

I think in Maths you are graded based on the number of questions you answered correct. If you can answer 30 questions out 50 for instance and get them all correct, you will get a high mark. A friend scored a very high mark that was not commensurate with the number of questions he answered.

I am not sure how they do the math stuff anyway.

I totally disagree with the idea that students who fail JAMB are lazy or dull.  JAMB is an exam where the cut off mark is determined by the scores obtained.  While those students who are true to themselves, (and as such obtain scores which should actually be used in setting the cut off mark) are ridiculed,   scores obtained by one form of cheating or the other are used as a bench mark to set the cut off mark. This gives the impression that these students, who actually read and perform to the best of their capabilities, are lazy.  Let's take a step back and check ourselves, students do not set out to fail.  The failure or inability of students who put in hard work in order to meet up with the false standards set by JAMB (as a result of cut off marks that are set with falsely obtained scores) can whole be traced back to the poor level of education in the country.  It is simply a reflection, a ripple effect of the total failure of our educational system.  The fact that schools can no longer keep the attention of our students is a problem that we need to address.  Education can be just as interesting as the Premier League, Championships, Music etc.  Totally blaming the educational system too will be a failure on my part.  The success or failure of a child can usually be traced back to the home,

many are ill prepared. passing neco or waec does not guarantee you are prepared for jamb. their questions are more logical than waec/neco which are more straight forward. student ought to practice past questions very well and know the technique which they used in setting their questions.

MsTom:

If people fail that much over a very long period of time, then, the JAMB itself should be questioned. Personally, I feel Jamb is not a true test of knowledge. People who read hard for it fail or pass by a little over 200 and those who pass even to over 300 have been proved to know nothing when they get to universities. Have you ever wondered how someone who passed WAEC with good grades fail JAMB and yet, they pass SAT, TOEFL, A-LEVELS (ok, that was going overboard) ? My sugestion is scrap JAMB. OR, let it be proctered and handled by prometrics for example. OR better yet, let the universities set a form of entrance exams for the students. Some universities( not sure of now) do not even trust the Jamb results themselves.

Offcourse all parties should be questioned ( Jamb, students, parents, teachers, schools and the government ). Jamb is an aptitude test and definitely not in the same category with WAEC which is just a test of your knowledge. Lets not go the route of those foreign exams because those who failed jamb and WAEC will definitely in most cases fail these exams as well.  

JAMB is gradually moving towards the prometric route and we sure do need it to test students hoping to gain admission in our higher institutions. Those schools condemning JAMB are not saints or credible as well.

WHAT ABOUT THE SITUATION WHERE DRUNKS MARK OUR SCRIPTS, I MEAN, I HAVE LIVED WITH TEACHERS WHO COLLECT SCRIPTS TO MARK AND THEN HAVE THEM TRANSFERED TO A STUDENT, WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO SAY ABOUT THAT? ANYWAY, THE FAILURE THING ABOUT JAMB IS LOOKING LIKE THE POLITICAL MIASMA SORROUNDING NIGERIAN EDUCATION, IKNOW WE OUGHT TO PREPARE ADEQUATELY BUT, WHAT HASW THE TEACHER DEPOSITED IN US.


JOEMAKS DA WHITE BRODA.NAIJA
+2347032531412

naija pickins, JAMB's marking scheme is American, that means in a multiple choice exam, it is better u leave out the ones u re not sure of the answer cos it will cost u to choose a wrong answer. this affects nigerian students who like to play the guessing game with multiple choice questions, e.g., in an exam of 200 multiple choice questions, if you get 120 questions correctly and lose 80, the marking sheme is such that it will subtract the 80 u lost from the 120 u got right and at the end of the day your mark will be 40 out of 200 and u start wondering what happened. i personally think students should be told about this scheme so as to minimize low(NOT FAILURE) marks in such exams.

joe4dmaks:

WHAT ABOUT THE SITUATION WHERE DRUNKS MARK OUR SCRIPTS, I MEAN, I HAVE LIVED WITH TEACHERS WHO COLLECT SCRIPTS TO MARK AND THEN HAVE THEM TRANSFERED TO A STUDENT, WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO SAY ABOUT THAT? ANYWAY, THE FAILURE THING ABOUT JAMB IS LOOKING LIKE THE POLITICAL MIASMA SORROUNDING NIGERIAN EDUCATION, IKNOW WE OUGHT TO PREPARE ADEQUATELY BUT, WHAT HASW THE TEACHER DEPOSITED IN US.


JOEMAKS DA WHITE BRODA.NAIJA
+2347032531412

JAMB scripts aren't marked by hand, you ninny!

otesy:

I totally disagree with the idea that students who fail JAMB are lazy or dull.  JAMB is an exam where the cut off mark is determined by the scores obtained.  While those students who are true to themselves, (and as such obtain scores which should actually be used in setting the cut off mark) are ridiculed,   scores obtained by one form of cheating or the other are used as a bench mark to set the cut off mark. This gives the impression that these students, who actually read and perform to the best of their capabilities, are lazy.  Let's take a step back and check ourselves, students do not set out to fail.  The failure or inability of students who put in hard work in order to meet up with the false standards set by JAMB (as a result of cut off marks that are set with falsely obtained scores) can whole be traced back to the poor level of education in the country.  It is simply a reflection, a ripple effect of the total failure of our educational system.  The fact that schools can no longer keep the attention of our students is a problem that we need to address.  Education can be just as interesting as the Premier League, Championships, Music etc.  Totally blaming the educational system too will be a failure on my part.  The success or failure of a child can usually be traced back to the home,

The benchmark is on average around 200/400. if that isn't low enough for you, what is?


Seun got it right; there are too many applicants and too few admission slots. The only answer is more universities!

hameet:

naija pickins, JAMB's marking scheme is American, that means in a multiple choice exam, it is better u leave out the ones u re not sure of the answer cos it will cost u to choose a wrong answer. this affects nigerian students who like to play the guessing game with multiple choice questions, e.g., in an exam of 200 multiple choice questions, if you get 120 questions correctly and lose 80, the marking sheme is such that it will subtract the 80 u lost from the 120 u got right and at the end of the day your mark will be 40 out of 200 and u start wondering what happened. i personally think students should be told about this scheme so as to minimize low(NOT FAILURE) marks in such exams.

Heard of this once. My question, why should there be a marking scheme? shouldnt a right answer should be a right answer and a wrong answer should be a wrong answer?

texazzpete:

JAMB scripts aren't marked by hand, you ninny!

with all these marking scheme, are you sure?

how much is jamb payin u 4 dis tutorial?
2 or 3 yrs ago, a police officer(40+yrs) had d highest score. Isn't dat a maniputn.

MsTom:

Heard of this once. My question, why should there be a marking scheme? shouldnt a right answer should be a right answer and a wrong answer should be a wrong answer?

with all these marking scheme, are you sure?

There are different marking schemes for different exams and trust me they are very necessary, these are not primary school exams.

There are more complicated marking schemes than what JAMB is using, you do not want to hear about the SAT, ACTS, GMAT, GRE and co. Marking schemes are not complicated to implement because they are not done manually but on the computer. Those who have knowledge in computing, mathematics and statistics will explain to you better.

Nigerian Students fail JAMB Exams for different reasons.

1. Laziness: Many youths and teenagers in Nigeria today are not ready to spend quality time studying. They're not disciplined academically and cannot create a schedule of studying for themselves. They're so good at complaining about the lack of textbooks and study materials, while they do not make any effort to locate libraries that might have such books. I studied for my JAMB Exams back in 1999 with a JAMB Syllabus brochure that I purchased at a bookshop. I covered the topics one by one and also got textbooks [ though they were old and dirty, it was worth the effort   ] to aid me in my study. I also bought past questions and answers from the bookshops. I studied hard and avoided watching the television all the time for my 3 months of intense studies. Many students nowadays will prefer to use their money to maintain their mobile phones and buy 7-Pack movie DVD's which are sold all over the place. I used up packets of candles and never bothered about PHCN's frequent blackouts. teenagers and youths these days will use PHCN as an excuse for their failure

2. Lack of Counselling and Mentorship: The problem starts right from when candidates purchase their JAMB Exam forms. Many of them do not quite know what course they want to study in the University. This problem crops up because there are no career counsellors in our secondary and primary schools  If a student is able to decide the actual course he wants to study at the University, he or she will be strong in the subject areas pertaining to the course. For example, a student who wants to study Theatre Arts and has a natural flair for acting  will be fairly good in subjects like Literature In English, History, Bible Knowledge, English etc.  Those are the subjects he or she should be encouraged to study for and take in the JAMB Exams We need career counsellors and mentors in our secondary schools especially.  A mentor could be a scholar who is doing well at the University or has just graduated with at least a 2:2 Degree or a Upper Credit from the Polytechnic. The mentor will then be assigned to a group of students to guide them and give them study tips towards their exams. There is no way the situation will not improve if mentors are used to inspire JAMB Candidates.

3. The Inefficiency of JAMB Itself: JAMB as an Examinations body is not efficient in its services in general terms  Enough information is not being distilled to students about the Examination Process and how the papers are graded. The JAMB site itself sucks JAMB needs to be proactive and innovative in their approach to conducting exams that will get students admitted into our higher institutions. The body needs to start getting students informed and groomed towards their exams right from JSS1. JAMB has to start organising seminars and lectures in different secondary schools all over the nation. Students should be made aware of how JAMB operates and the role the body plays towards their securing admission into our Universities and Polytechnics. Dramas and playlets could be inculcated into the seminars to warn students about the dangers of cheating during exams. Solid information will get students prepared for the JAMB Exams far ahead of time.

May I also add that many teachers in our secondary schools are not even qualified to teach their students. Some teachers do not update themselves about new stuff in their Subject area and have not gone for retraining in decades. Dilapidated buildings and classes without windows, empty libraries and schools without roofs also contribute to failure psychologically. Cheers.