CELEBRATING EXAMINATION MALPRACTICE?

CELEBRATING EXAMINATION MALPRACTICE?

NECO SSCE results this year are the best in five years, maybe so, to say. But the question is, do the results indicate an improvement in standards? Without hesitation, I say a big "No!" Truth must be told. EXAMINATION MALPRACTICES have got more ruthless. In my opinion, out of the over 1 million candidates that took part in the exams, at least 900 thousand must have engaged in malpractice! Is this an outrageous estimation? I want somebody to prove me wrong; and the person should be an SSCE examiner and, or a secondary school teacher like me.
What we encounter during the SSCE marking exercise is usually mind-boggling! Candidates from centres miles apart having similar answers, similar handwritings, so beautiful, and, in English Language scripts, analysing realities far beyond them, graphically capturing their experiences as undergraduates, workers, postgraduate students and, on the contrary, failing to pass JAMB-UTME creditably, beyond this paper brilliance!
The exam malpractice syndicates across Nigeria seem to be uniting in their evil and buying over the entire conduct of the SSC exams, their clients- the students- having little or nothing to do to pass the exams. As a teacher, I can testify that over 80% of teachers nominated by school Principals to participate in SSCE supervision are usually their allies in this bad business, teachers who connive with parents, other teachers, etc to perpetuate the vice of examination malpractice. Candidates in the exams become mere duplicating machines or mere figures. In such centres where there is this compromise, the answer scripts eventually packaged and sent to WAEC or NECO, are actually written outside the examination halls or classrooms, or copied materials from photocopies of solved answers smuggled in by the teams of daredevils who make fortunes during the SSC examinations season!
NECO/WAEC should therefore bow their heads in shame and stop celebrating EXAMINATION MALPRACTICE. The same students who have passed so well will end up failing to pass JAMB/UTME, or further cheat their way through the universities and be dumped into the society as certified illiterates, bunglers!