The Federal Government has announced plans to abolish the Junior Secondary School Common Entrance Examination and introduce a Learner Identification Number to monitor pupils from primary school throughout their academic journey.
The Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, made this known during an interactive session with journalists held in Lagos on Saturday.
According to media reports, the minister explained that the proposed reforms are intended to expand access to education and strengthen the monitoring of pupils across the country.
He stated that the common entrance examination would gradually be discontinued and replaced with a more detailed evaluation system.
He said, “It will be replaced by Continuous Assessment, CA. The CA will reflect the performance of the pupil from primary one and even if a pupil is transferring from one school to another, he will take it along to his new school.”
The minister further explained that the new framework would help address existing gaps in the transition from primary to secondary education, especially the large number of pupils who do not advance to the next stage of schooling.
Presenting data to justify the reform, Alausa said millions of pupils enrolled in public primary schools across the country do not proceed to the secondary level.
“We have over 50,000 public primary schools in the country with over 23 million pupils. However, from statistics available to us, only a little over 3 million among those pupils move to the junior secondary school level in our public schools, then the question is, where are the about 20 million not enrolled in our public secondary schools?” he queried.
He stressed that the situation clearly indicates a major access challenge and emphasised the need for state governments to build additional schools.
“It is obvious that we cannot say our private schools accommodate all of them. The issue is simply lack of access and we are working on that. There is need to build more schools and I have met the Nigerian Governors’ Forum over that. State governments need to build more schools to accommodate more pupils and students,” he said.
To tackle monitoring challenges, the minister revealed that the government would introduce the Learner Identification Number for pupils beginning from the primary school level.
“To also follow up on our pupils and students, we are introducing the Learner Identification Number right from primary school level for our children. It will be unique to each child and they will have the number no matter where they started schooling or later transferred to,” he explained.
He added that the new system would enable authorities to monitor students’ academic progress and identify those who drop out of school.
“If somebody is expected to be in JSS class one and he is not there, we will be able to know the reason why he is not continuing his education,” Alausa said.
The minister also disclosed that steps are being taken to revive the school feeding programme as part of efforts to increase enrolment in public schools, noting that the initiative may be moved to the Federal Ministry of Education for more effective supervision.
The proposed reforms form part of broader efforts by the government to strengthen the education sector, improve student retention, and ensure that more Nigerian children complete their basic education.
