Amid concerns over the poor performance of candidates in this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), stakeholders have blamed the development on failing education standards and a dysfunctional society.

Former Vice-Chancellor, University of Ibadan (UI), Prof. Idowu Olayinka, public analyst, Olabode Lucas, and educationist, Adenike Ogunshe, said the situation reflects societal failure, which must be tackled by all concerned to save the system from collapse.

Olayinka, who expressed concern over the state of education at the primary and secondary levels, said issues of teacher shortage, lack of teaching and learning materials, and welfare must be addressed to bring about the needed change.

He said: “The standard of education at the primary and secondary school levels is nothing to write home about, especially in the public sector. The teachers are inadequate in number, while those in service are not well remunerated. You cannot build something on nothing. If the quality at those lower levels is very poor, then we should not expect miracles by the time the products are ready for tertiary education.’’

Lucas, on his part, blamed successive governments for their failure to prioritise education.

For instance, he noted that budgetary allocation to the sector over the years has been very low, which has affected the quality of teaching and learning.

Besides, he added that because teachers are poorly motivated, they are not committed, while students are generally not interested in learning.

He warned that until we give education its rightful place, with government at all levels adequately funding the sector, the country may not get out of the woods.

Similarly, Ogunshe said while candidates have their own share of the blame, the examination body also contributed to the poor results through its actions.

For instance, Ogunshe noted that most of the candidates were severely short-changed due to time disadvantage, emotional and physical anxieties, as well as examination shocks

“To start with, the critical situation under which the candidates wrote the examination is always down-played or unrecognised when analysing the protracted mass failure of students.

“Right from the time of physical conduct of the examination, there were several occasions where students’ subject combinations were wrongly sent; there were situations where examination questions were taken from students who had finished their subjects, to give those who were yet to write such subjects.”

Besides, she noted that the waiting time to write the exams, coupled with network issues, is also part of the challenges JAMB must investigate.