JAMB abolishes cut-off marks, tertiary institutions to decide

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has cancelled general cut-off marks for entrance into tertiary institutions, allowing the schools to set their minimum benchmarks.

The decision was reached at the board’s 2021 virtual policy meeting chaired by the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu. During the gathering where JAMB Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede spoke, the stakeholders adopted the 2021 admission guidelines, which provide that all applications for part-time or full-time programmes in degree, NCE, OND and other programmes must be posted only through JAMB.

The meeting also approved that the maximum and minimum scores for Direct Entry (DE) should be six and two or E in deference to extant law.

On other admission criteria, Oloyede said the candidate’s credentials must be uploaded on CAPS and recommended by the institution prior to JAMB’s approval and candidate’s acceptance of admission.

He added that for the 2021/2022 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), the board is introducing two new subjects – Computer Studies and Physical and Health Education – bringing the total to 25.

The stakeholders also exempted prison inmates, visually impaired and foreign candidates from sitting for the test. Throwing light on the 2020 admissions, Oloyede said of the 956,809 vacancies in the 962 tertiary institutions in Nigeria, some 600,000 had been admitted.

Stating that admission slots remained in some specialised courses due to lack of qualified candidates, Oloyede said private universities were only able to admit 36,381 out of the available 120,938.

While declaring the meeting open, Adamu commended JAMB for prioritising the National Identification Number (NIN) during registration.

Represented by the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Sonny Echono, the minister said the NIN adoption drastically reduced malpractices at the 2021 exams, urging the West African Examination Council (WAEC) to tow same line.

He said: “I am enthused that the last examinations recorded the lowest cases of examination irregularities in the history of the board because those, who normally would have exploited the weak links through biometrics infractions, have been effectively checkmated with the introduction of NIN by JAMB.”

“It is gratifying that WAEC has decided to follow the path of using NIN to curb examination malpractices. The ministry is presently considering other ways of using the NIN to uncover some other admissions irregularities and all perpetrators, including their collaborators.”