The Federal Government is replacing the traditional common entrance exam with a lifelong Continuous Assessment (CA) model.
This reform was announced in Lagos by the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, who confirmed that student performance will now be tracked starting from Primary 1. Moving away from the high-stakes, one-off exam, this new Continuous Assessment (CA) record ‘travels’ with the student, providing a transparent and consistent academic profile for secondary school admission.
“We have over 50,000 public primary schools in the country with over 23 million pupils. However, from statistics available to us, only a little over 3 million among those pupils move to the junior secondary school level in our public schools, then the question is, where are the about 20 million not enrolled in our public secondary schools? It is obvious that we cannot say our private schools accommodate all of them.
“The issue is simply lack of access and we are working on that. There is need to build more schools and I have met the Nigerian Governors’ Forum over that. State governments need to build more schools to accommodate more pupils and students.
“To also follow up on our pupils and students, we are introducing the Learner Identification Number right from primary school level for our children. It will be unique to each child and they will have the number no matter where they started schooling or later transferred to. If somebody is expected to be in JSS class one and he is not there, we will be able to know the reason why he is not continuing his education,” Alausa said.
Minister Alausa further announced that the Federal Government will soon phase out the National Common Entrance Examination, noting that
this move aims to streamline the transition for pupils moving from primary school to the Junior Secondary (JSS) level.
“It will be replaced by Continuous Assessment, CA. The CA will reflect the performance of the pupil from primary one and even if a pupil is transferring from one school to another, he will take it along to his new school,” he explained.
The Minister also revealed ongoing efforts to resuscitate the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, a move designed to boost enrolment in public schools nationwide.
He hinted at a major administrative shift, with the programme moving from the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs to the Federal Ministry of Education for more rigorous monitoring and implementation.
