JAMB Announces UTME Reform: Consideration of Adding "Life Skills and Critical Thinking" Assessment

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) is exploring a significant shift in how it evaluates candidates for tertiary admission with plans to incorporate critical thinking and life skills into the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).

Registrar of JAMB, Porf Segun Aina disclosed on Wednesday during an appearance on the Nigerian Television Authority’s Good Morning Nigeria programme that a committee of education stakeholders and experts has been established to develop recommendations on how the proposed competencies could be assessed .

According to Aina, the committee will determine whether critical thinking and life skills should be introduced as separate components of the UTME or integrated into its existing subject-based structure .

The registrar explained that the move is necessary because the UTME primarily performs a ranking function among candidates who already possess O-Level qualifications. Continuing to focus exclusively on subject-matter knowledge, he argued, could amount to duplicating assessments already conducted by examination bodies such as the West African Examinations Council and the National Examinations Council .

"Scores as Ranking -Not An Absolute Measure" - Aina Segun

In a related clarification, Aina cautioned against interpreting UTME scores as an absolute measure of a candidate’s intelligence or academic ability, explaining that the examination is primarily designed to rank candidates relative to one another.

"It is not how good you are that your JAMB score speaks to. It is more about how you rank against others," - Aina.

He explained that the distribution of scores within a particular cohort could influence how individual results are perceived.

"If you are in a cohort of JAMB candidates where everybody scores above 300, then 299 will suddenly start to look like a very low score. So, we must put this thing in proper perspective" - he said .

Admission Anxiety and Identity Fraud

The JAMB boss also announced measures aimed at reducing admission-related anxiety, including a system upgrade that provides candidates with detailed progress on their admission status rather than vague notifications .

Candidates who have lost access to their registered phone numbers or email addresses can now update them, while name and date of birth corrections are possible through a new alignment process with the National Identity Management Commission .

Aina, however, warned that anyone attempting to exploit the new flexibility for identity fraud would face the full weight of the law .