₦airaland Forum

Eriokanmi:
The best they can do is reduce the admission cut off scores for universities and ensure every institution complies. Since the result is so bad as seen, the worst in decades, jamb should just reduce university admission cut off for major curses to 150. Let the post UTME now decide who's capable enough to earn a slot in their respective courses of study.

Seriously, I don't see any big deal in this. In my time, if you scored 220 for instance, you're a guru. This was before the advent of the Internet. Their marking scheme was so strict. If you don't understand any question, just leave it jejelly because if you attempt it wrongly, your mark would be deducted from those you got correctly. Waec back then wasn't easy to come by. If you managed to have an A in core subjects, na celebration galore. Combination of waec results used to be order of the day, even for major courses. In brochures you'd see 5 o'level credit passes at a sitting or 6 credit passes in 2 sittings. Nothing like post utme. Even in law, P was allowed in maths.

But nowadays, you see students scoring As all through. Marking schemes had been adjusted over time to favour a particular region or tribe, which is part of what's affecting the standard of education in Nigeria. In maths for instance, those marking waec back then would be interested only in the final answer. If the workings were supposed have 5 steps and you got the last answer wrongly, especially where they're asking you to round off your answer to the nearest whole number and you got it wrongly, they'd not spare you, except the marker just wanted to show mercy on you and used his pen to help you write the correct answer, then, mark it. Otherwise you'd miss the whole question and that's the reason we hardly saw candidates who had an A1 in maths back then. But nowadays,maths marking schemes are in steps same as other subjects that involve calculations. Even if you got the final answer wrongly but you got the steps correctly, you'd still earn some marks.

I wish we could go back to that era. Our system of education can be overhauled if they could start from that level.

But what if you miss all the steps and score final answer, how are they marking it?

Aircom8:
But what if you miss all the steps and score final answer, how are they marking it?

It's called wuruwuru to the answer

Eriokanmi:
Pls how old are you be sincere? I'm in my late 40s and I can tell you there was never a time any of our maths teachers marked our workings in steps. If they couldn't do this at school levels, is it waec that would do that? They later changed the scheme, like I said in my earlier post.
I derive nothing by making up any story. Without being told, I experienced this throughout my sech school days and waec mock exams. Our teachers would always warn us of being nervous when attempting questions to avoid mistakes in maths. I don't expect this to be an issue, please ask those who schooled in that era or if you still have your maths teacher's number, ask him and honestly come back to drop whatever he says.

Good morning. Hope you do fine.

I am 39. Finished secondary school 2004, first degree 2011.

My primary school teachers marked steps and gave us very good listening ears. Same with the secondary ones too

My university Maths lecturers all marked steps with prudence, unless one Cameroon man who said the answer cannot be right if the working is wrong. Bad of him anyway.

Well, I agree your experiences might be different. What i meant in my earlier post was that a Professor of Maths should be of the experience level of checking steps in Maths. Only for cases where such a person made it there by the hanki packi means

Hmmm....it's been nice chatting with you.
Thanks

donmik:
Good morning. Hope you do fine.

I am 39. Finished secondary school 2004, first degree 2011.

My primary school teachers marked steps and gave us very good listening ears. Same with the secondary ones too

My university Maths lecturers all marked steps with prudence, unless one Cameroon man who said the answer cannot be right if the working is wrong. Bad of him anyway.

Well, I agree your experiences might be different. What i meant in my earlier post was that a Professor of Maths should be of the experience level of checking steps in Maths. Only for cases where such a person made it there by the hanki packi means

Hmmm....it's been nice chatting with you.
Thanks

Thanks for your kind response. Obviously from your age, you wrote WASSCE. Step-by-step marking of maths started a few years after the formation of WASSCE in 1989. I wrote WAEC and during our time, the body was very strict with marking scheme. They became flexible with time, to favour some educationally disadvantaged regions.

As you can see, they're now allowed to also use a calculator. I'm not sure you guys used calculator cos it was introduced not too long ago. Before our set, there was nothing like mathematical and statistical tables from waec. What my older siblings and uncles used was four figure tables so, they keep changing by introducing measures that would enhance the performance of candidates.

I like the step-by-step marking though. It's not polite to just base the judgement on the final answer. It would mean total waste of effort on the part of the candidate.
Nice chatting with you too bro.