The Ekiti State Ministry of Education has charged teachers of public primary and secondary schools to dedicate more time to the training of pupils and students on the proper use of Optical Marc Recognition (OMR) sheets to prevent avoidable errors in forthcoming public examinations.
The Permanent Secretary of the State Ministry of Education, Dr Folakemi Olomojobi who gave the charge in Ado-Ekiti during the 2023 Post Examination stakeholders appraisal meeting noted that wrong use of OMR sheets has been identified as one of the major causes of examination failure among learners.
She stated that strict measures will be taken to ensure that registration for placement examinations in schools ends by next January to adequately prepare for the Optical Marc Recognition (OMR) Sheets of registered candidates for the examination.
She outlined plans to improve the performance of students in Public Primary Secondary Schools in the state in public examinations.
The Permanent Secretary said the ongoing enrollment will be digitalized, hence the emphasis on digital literacy across the education sector, saying data would be captured electronically to ensure an error-free examination, as well as the possibility of students having their results three (3) weeks after the examination.
She stressed that there would be no room for dual registration among pupils and that once a pupil is registered for a placement examination in a private school, the pupil cannot be registered for the same examination in a public school, as this has been noted as another major challenge militating against the successful conduct of examination in the state.
Dr Olomojobi charged the Area Education Officers to visit schools in their communities and encourage them to ensure proper registration of their schools.
Earlier in his remarks, the Director of Examination, Toba Fagbuyiro said the registration of prospective candidates should be properly done by the schools according to the laid down rules to guard against cases of irregular candidates.
Fagbuyiro, who warned against examination malpractices, said a concrete policy would be put in place to deter late registration of candidates and merging of students from different schools for examination.
Dr Segun Aina, a representative of AiTech Ltd, the agency in charge of the OMR/EMS sheets urged invigilators to ensure due diligence as far as the OMR sheet is concerned so that the process of releasing results would be smooth and seamless.
He added that there would be two processes of registration, online and offline, advising that schools that use cyber cafe operators for their registration should sit with them when they are uploading their pupils’ data to avoid errors.
