By Ngozi Oboh
Next News Online
July 28, 2011 11:25PM
After a long deliberation at a combined policy meeting of the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB), held on Thursday in Abuja at the auditorium of the National Universities Commission, education leaders agreed on a cut-off benchmark for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) held nation-wide on June 18th, 2011.
For the universities, a cut-off point of 180 was decided, while 160 is for those going to the Polytechnics and Colleges of Education.
Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i, minister of Education, therefore issued a strong warning to university authorities that it would no longer tolerate what it described as random admissions as well as late submission of list of admitted candidates into the universities.
The minister, who spoke while declaring the meeting open, lamented the hitches this brought during the 2010 admission process and appealed to all institutions to adhere to admission guidelines so as to maintain a sustainable and healthy academic calendar.
“I wish to remind all institutions on the adherence to admissions time-table as prepared by the JAMB. Last year, this was seriously abused as many institutions were still making submissions to the board up to May 2011. May I remind all institutions to follow the guidelines with regard to issues like the criteria of merit, quota, educationally less developed states, catchment area and the 60:40 science/arts ratio,” she said.
“To this end, the decisions you take and the discretion you exercise in the course of this meeting will be critical as these will go a long way in the realisation of our nation’s aspirations and the current administration’s goal of delivery on the social contract as well as being among the top twenty economies in the world by the year 20:2020.”
Sam Ukpabi, chairman of JAMB said the combined policy meeting was vital to the educational development because admission of qualified candidates to the nation’s tertiary institutions will be addressed.