Zulum: Most Borno SSCE holders unqualified for university admission

Babagana Zulum, governor of Borno, says most of the secondary school graduates produced in the state do not qualify for admission into university.

In a statement entitled, ‘Public schools: Tell me the truth, Zulum begs at meeting with Borno’s 84 principals’, the governor listed the numerous challenges bedeviling the education sector while lamenting the decline in the standard of education.

The governor was said to have hosted the principals at the government house in Maiduguri, on Sunday.

Zulum said those who eventually get admitted into universities still struggle academically.

“Education is the bedrock of any development. Without functional educational system, we shall continue to experience this Boko Haram insurgency in Borno,” Zulum said.

“Look at the kind of students we are graduating from our public secondary schools, most of them do not qualify for admission into universities, even those who get admitted find it very difficult to cope.

“There is a general decline in the standard of education in public institutions all over the country. There is the lack of qualified teachers, inadequate teaching facilities, poor maintenance culture, general decay of infrastructure, Government’s inability to ensure monitoring and evaluation, centralised control by the ministry, unnecessary bureaucracy, and irregular training and retraining of teachers and other essential staff.

“There is poor data management and indiscipline amongst the major problems affecting the public school system.”

The governor also directed “the immediate reintroduction of the common entrance examination” for primary six pupils, insisting that “only pupils who pass the examination by securing a cut-off mark, should be eligible for admission into the first year of Junior Secondary Schools”.