NUC To Sanction Universities Over Outrageous Post UTME Fees

This is a good one coming from the National Universities Commission, NUC from my own point of view. The only thing is that they should have been proactive regarding this. They should have placed a bar on how much any University or tertiary institution at all can charge for Post UTME Screening.

Here is the full gist of what NUC has done regarding the 2013/2014 Post UTME:

The National Council on Education has pegged charges by Nigerian universities for their admission test known as post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (post-UTME) at N2, 000.

It has, accordingly, directed the National Universities Commission (NUC) to sanction any university found to have charged candidates above the approved fee.

This was contained in a communiqué issued at the end of the 59th meeting of the National Council on Education (NCE) held at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.

The council also asked the National Examination Council (NECO) to produce and release all outstanding Senior Secondary School Certificates being delayed over the years.

NCE specifically said, “NECO must produce and release all outstanding certificates before the next NCE meeting and thereafter ensure release of certificates before the conduct of similar examinations”.

The communique which was read by the Minister of Education, Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i, noted the efforts of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in curbing examination malpractice in Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME).

Meanwhile, the implementation of the revised Nine-Year Basic Education Curriculum has suffered another setback as state governments have said that they are not ready for its implementation.

This is even as the Federal Government chided the state commissioners for education for not doing much in ensuring the implementation of the new curriculum approved since 2007 by the National Council on Education (NCE).

Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), Professor Godswill Obioma, at the close of the 2013 NCE meeting in Abuja on Friday blasted the education commissioners for encouraging policy summersault.

However, the council has approved the incorporation of the 1 year pre-primary education into the existing 6-3-3-4 to become 1-6-3-3-4.

Trouble started when the Minister of Education, Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i, who presided over the meeting gave opportunity for each commissioner for education, representing their state governments, to state their position on the implementation of the revised curriculum.

Only few commissioners said their states were ready while majority of them complained about lack of skilled teachers and infrastructures to implement the new curriculum, especially as regards teaching of the entrepreneurship and trade subjects.

NCE was therefore forced to shift the implementation of the revised 9-Year Basic Education Curriculum to 2014 beginning with Primary 1 and Junior Secondary School 1.

Obioma recalled that it was a collective decision at the NCE meeting in 2011 that in 2014 students should be examined on the trade subjects.

Meanwhile, a communiqué issued at the end of the meeting and read by the Minister of Education approved the implementation of the revised 9-Year Basic Education Curriculum with effect from 2014 beginning with Primary 1 and Junior Secondary School 1.

The Council also approved that the admission ratio of students in science and trade subjects into technical colleges should be 30:70 respectively, while every student in federal and state science and technical colleges must offer a technical subject.

You can tell us how much your school is charging for Post-UTME here and let us expose them.