Malpractices, Shortage Of Question Papers Witnessed In 2013 UTMEExams

The Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) was, Saturday, held in Lagos State amid delay in capturing the candidates’ biometric data, malpractices, and shortage of question papers. The examination started in Yewa Junior High School, Diary Farm, Agege, Ikotun High School, Government Technical College, Ikotunand Igando Community High School, around 10: 00am, an hour behind official starting time. In some centres in the state, some candidates were seen shortly before the commencement of the examination copying supposed answers from their cell phones into small sheets of papers, which they hid in secluded parts of their body including their private parts to beat security officers, according to SundayVanguard. Also, some clever ones went into the examination halls with their cell phones making it easy for them to cheat. At Vetland Senior High School in Ifako-Ijaiye Local Government Area, officials tackled the challenge of biometric screening of candidates within the scheduled time. The chief examiner at the centre, who identified herself as Mrs Olajide, had to announce to those affected and candidates who had earlier beenscreened manually to go into classrooms within their examination numbers and settle down. While the exam was going on, she went roundto announce that every candidate should ensure to do biometric screening before leaving the exam hall. “These are some of the candidates that the machine could not capture their data and we cannot continue towaste time on them. That is why I asked them to go in first while the official will go round to do their biometric capturing later,” she said. There was also a situation of candidates not having all their subjects combination in one booklet and there was no left over questions papers across subject combination. Some candidates who had economics, chemistry, government as subjects combination were affected. The supervisors at some centres managed the situation by asking affected candidates to switch the question papers with those who hadtheirs complete pending when they would be ready to do them. “And we’re able to manage the problem with understanding,” Mr. Yekini Olawale, a supervisor at Yewa Junior High School who teaches at Lagos City Polytechnic, said. On malpractices, although many supervisors denied knowledge of any, a JAMB official in charge of the 11 centres in Ikotun/Idimu area said that over 30 candidates were caughtcheating in exam hall and that some invigilators aided the practice such that he had to rearrange some of theinvigilators at Comprehensive College,Ikotun, having suspected foul play. [Vanguard]