Minister of Education Tunji Alausa made this known during an interactive session with journalists in Lagos on Saturday, explaining that the reforms are designed to improve access to education and strengthen student tracking nationwide.
Under the new approach, the common entrance examination will be gradually phased out and replaced with a Continuous Assessment system that evaluates pupils based on their performance from the early years of primary education.
“It will be replaced by Continuous Assessment, CA. The CA will reflect the performance of the pupil from primary one and even if a pupil is transferring from one school to another, he will take it along to his new school.”
Alausa said the initiative aims to close gaps in the transition from primary to secondary school, especially the alarming number of pupils who do not advance.
Highlighting the scale of the issue, he disclosed that although Nigeria has over 50,000 public primary schools with more than 23 million pupils, only slightly above 3 million move on to junior secondary school level in public institutions.
“We have over 50,000 public primary schools in the country with over 23 million pupils. However, from statistics available to us, only a little over 3 million among those pupils move to the junior secondary school level in our public schools, then the question is, where are the about 20 million not enrolled in our public secondary schools?”
He emphasized that the figures point to a serious access problem, noting that private schools cannot absorb the large number of out-of-school children. He added that discussions have already been held with the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, urging state governments to invest in building more schools.
“It is obvious that we cannot say our private schools accommodate all of them. The issue is simply lack of access and we are working on that. There is need to build more schools and I have met the Nigerian Governors’ Forum over that. State governments need to build more schools to accommodate more pupils and students.”
To improve monitoring, the minister said the government will introduce a unique Learner Identification Number for every child starting from primary school, which will remain with them regardless of school transfers.
“To also follow up on our pupils and students, we are introducing the Learner Identification Number right from primary school level for our children. It will be unique to each child and they will have the number no matter where they started schooling or later transferred to.”
He explained that the system will allow authorities to track students’ progress and quickly identify those who drop out of school.
“If somebody is expected to be in JSS class one and he is not there, we will be able to know the reason why he is not continuing his education.”
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