By Wilson Adekumola
The Federal Government has banned children less than 12 years of age from participating in the National Common Entrance Examination for admission into the Unity Schools across the country.
This directive was given by the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Mr. David Andrew Adejo, on Saturday in Abuja while monitoring the conduct of the 2023 Common Entrance Examination into the 110 Federal Government Colleges across the Federation.
The government has also ordered the National Examination Council to devise a system that would prevent underage persons from registering for the examination, including making birth certificates compulsory as registration requirements.
A total of 72,821 candidates were said to have sat for the examination on Saturday nationwide.
While explaining that to get into secondary school, a candidate should be at least 12 years old, Adejo added that one could be eleven plus during the examination, and by September, such a person would have attained the age of 12 years.
The Permanent Secretary expressed his displeasure to see underage students taking the examination after monitoring the exercise at the Federal Government Girls College, Bwari, and Government Day Secondary School, Bwari.
He stressed that any child less than eleven years old should not be allowed, noting that Air Force Schools, among others, do not accept candidates less than twelve years old for admission into their schools.
According to the Permanent Secretary, “This year, I have advice for parents, and I beg you to take this advice to any single home you know. We are killing our children by allowing underage children to write the Common Entrance Examination.
“I saw children that I know that are not up to 10, and three of them accepted that they are nine years old. We are doing many things; one is that we are teaching the children the wrong values. Education is not about passing exams. Education is teaching, learning, and character formation.
“I beg the parents, let these children do the exams when they should. We don’t get value by pushing our children too far. Most of the time, if a child starts too early, he or she will have problems later in life.
“Education is designed in such a way that at any particular stage in life, there are messages your brain can take, understand, and be able to use. We are moving away from education that is reliant on reading textbooks and passing exams.
“We are getting to a stage where education is what you can use your knowledge to do for society. You put a small child through all the rigours, and by the time he finishes secondary school, getting to university becomes a problem. I had that experience with a friend. To date, that friend has not gotten into a university simply because he was put into school earlier than the age that he was supposed to be put into school.
“Let our children get to the appropriate age before writing this exam, and we are going to make sure NECO puts in place appropriate checks. We didn’t want to get to the point where we would saybring a birth certificate,” but that is the stage we are going to now. In registering, also upload the child’s birth certificate, so that at our own end, we are able to cut some of these things,” he said.
The Permanent Secretary also noted that the efforts of the Federal Government and other stakeholders in encouraging girls’ education are yielding fruit, saying the number of girls that registered for the Common Entrance Examination this year is 38,000, far above the previous years.
Also speaking, the Registrar of NECO, Professor Dantani Wushishi, commended the conduct of the examination generally, noting from the reports gotten from across the country that the examination went on hitch-free, smooth, and orderly.
Confirming that 72,821 candidates registered for the 2023 National Common Entrance Examination, Wushishi revealed that Lagos State had the highest enrollment, followed by FCT, while the state with the lowest registration, Kebbi, has about 115 registered candidates.
He then said the council would put in place a mechanism to check some of the noticeable gaps caused by an upsurge in registration a day before the examination.
