The Registrar, West African Examinations Council (WAEC), Dr Iyi Uwadiae, says Nigeria’s standard of education has not fallen. What has fallen, he said, is the students’ commitment to learning.

Uwadiae made the assertion when he featured at the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) forum on Sunday in Lagos.

According to him, Nigerians have often made the mistake of using the mirror, which is WAEC’s report per candidate to measure the standard of education as contained in the curriculum against their performance and achievements.

“In five Anglo-phone West African countries, we have offices and conduct examinations at the primary, basic secondary and the senior secondary levels.

“Going by this therefore, I will say the standard of education has remained the same and striving to go higher rather than drop.

“The standard of education in the five member states is moving up because certain things we were taught in our time are not what is being taught in today’s curriculum and teaching syllabuses.

“When you compare them, you will find out that certain things that are taught at the basic secondary level are what we were taught when we were in form four and five as the case may be.

“But, if we now say achievement versus what we do today in terms of teaching and learning, then we can now say that it has nose-dived.”

The registrar added that the achievement of students today was nothing to write home about going by WAEC report.

He restated that the country’s education standard was still intact, adding that if the standard was not high, then the level of performance of candidates would be not high in external examinations.

“WAEC is such that we do not compare what we do with other international examination bodies.

“And so, the standard of our examination has always remained the same.

“However, the standard of our examination cannot remain the same if the standard of the curriculum is low because we draw the standard of our examinations from the standard of the teaching syllabuses.

“So, whether those things in the syllabuses are taught or not remains a different issue but to us, we assume that those things have been taught and so we set our examination based on that.”

The council’s boss said it was therefore a misjudgment to say that the standard of education had fallen based on the achievement of the candidates or students.

He said the standard would rather continue to soar higher as obtained in other climes, adding that students must learn to be more committed in a bid to tag along.

Uwadiae identified lack of commitment and too much distraction on the part of the students as a major challenge that hindered performance in public examinations.

He also said that there was the need for governments to encourage the teachers in a bid to improve their output as well as set machinery in place for training and retraining.

According to him, governments must also ensure that only qualified professionals are employed as teachers as well as ensure that modern day teaching and learning facilities are made available in schools at all levels.

He said going for less qualified teachers or people who were not teachers by profession was equally a source of worry as there was no way this group of persons would give what they do not have.

Uwadiae also said there was the need for parents to wake up to their responsibilities by ensuring that they carry out total monitoring and supervision of their children’s academic activities.

“We as parents have a huge role to play in all these.

“The idea of leaving these children all on their own or the maids in pursuit of economic activities should be looked into because the teachers alone cannot do it all.” (NAN)

•Photo shows WAEC registrar, Uwadiae.