The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) is considering plans to introduce life skills and critical thinking into the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) as part of efforts to improve the assessment of candidates seeking admission into tertiary institutions.

The Registrar of JAMB, Prof. Segun Aina, disclosed this during the Good Morning Nigeria programme on NTA on Wednesday, explaining that the proposed changes would help assess candidates’ abilities beyond their knowledge of academic subjects.

Aina clarified that the UTME minimum entry score was not necessarily a measure of how knowledgeable a candidate was, but rather a means of ranking candidates against their peers.

“It is not how good you are that your JAMB score speaks to. It is more about how you rank against others,” he said.

He explained that the minimum entry score depended largely on candidates’ overall performance in a particular examination cycle.

“If you are in a cohort of JAMB candidates where everybody scores above 300, then 299 will suddenly start to look like a very low score. So, we must put this thing in proper perspective,” the registrar said.

On the proposed examination reforms, Aina said the board was exploring ways to incorporate life skills and critical thinking into the UTME to make its assessment more relevant to the demands of higher education.

The proposal is part of a broader review of the examination framework, with a committee of education stakeholders and experts established to develop recommendations on how the skills could be assessed. The committee is also expected to examine whether the competencies should be introduced as separate components or incorporated into existing UTME subjects. \<Cite refs={\[“turn866024news3”,”turn866024search0″\]}/\>

The registrar also disclosed that JAMB had introduced measures to ease difficulties candidates encounter when updating their personal information.

He said candidates who had lost access to their registered telephone numbers or email addresses could now change them through the board’s procedures.

Aina further announced the introduction of a National Identification Number (NIN) alignment process, which allows candidates to update their details with the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) and subsequently align the information with their JAMB profiles.

“Before, you could not change your name or your date of birth on the JAMB profile,” he said, adding that the new process was designed to help candidates whose admission plans had been affected by discrepancies in their personal records.

“Thousands of people were stuck. They completed their degrees; they couldn’t go to university because this wasn’t possible. It is now possible,” he added.

Aina urged candidates to visit JAMB’s official website and social media platforms for further information on the new procedures and other services introduced by the board.