There are so many lessons to learn from the recent Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board’s (JAMB) Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) that recorded another massive set of poor results, just as happened in 2021. What troubles me is that, instead of the society to learn from the past scenarios as antidote to the future happenings, we keep repeating the same mistake.
Let me narrate a quick personal story. I graduated from high-school in the year 2020, wrote my first UTME. I wanted 200 and above, but I scored 12 marks below. Many of my classmates had the same issue: poor scores. I sat for it again the following year and my performance was poorer. Fortunately, I later got where my mistake was. Having read at least 70 percent of what was required of me to reach the target and attended free UTME tutorials, I not only passed the 200 score I wanted, but scored considerably high marks that later gave me a place in medical school.
At the free UTME tutorials, there’s this philosophy which I deeply like: ‘Tutor a student and support him, or just simply tutor him if you cannot do both. But never pay his UTME fees.’ This is not saying that students should not be financially supported, but emphasis should be focused more on teaching the students.
Yearly, governors, senators and other public figures spend millions buying UTME forms for thousands of students that do not know the value.
If we really want a radical change in the students’ performance, there is an urgent need for us to focus more on tutoring these students rigorously.
Salim Yakubu Akko, Gombe State.
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