Hello and welcome.

Our topic today is about why so many of our schoolchildren failed their matriculation examinations and we ask: What went wrong?

When the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board released this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination results on June 23, schoolchildren and their parents were not happy.

Only 14% of the more than 1.3 million candidates who sat for the examinations scored 160 out of 400, which is the required pass to secure admission into higher tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

Many blamed the board for the decline in the schoolchildren’s performance. The board, however, said although COVID-19 played a major role, many schoolchildren did not take the examinations seriously. Both these factors resulted in the mass failure, the board said.

Our guests are:

• Aisha Ali Indimi, a parent and also a teacher at the Yerwa Government Girls’ Secondary School; and
• Dr Umar Goni, a senior lecturer at the education department of the University of Maiduguri.