Nigerian secondary school students in final classes may have to sit for their final secondary school exam in November during the General Certificate Examination (GCE) if the timetable for the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) is not shifted, the Nigerian government has said.
The West African Examination Council (WAEC) had fixed for theoretical papers to start on August 3 and last till September 5, 2020.
But the Nigerian government has negotiated for the timetable to enable students in SS3 in Nigeria participate in the exams.
However, the Minister of State for Education, Emeka Nwajiuba, speaking during the Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19 briefing on Thursday, July 23, in Abuja, said should Nigerian government fail to convince WAEC to shift the timetable for WASSCE, that students in Nigeria would have only the option of writing their final exam in November, when GCE had been fixed to hold.
He said if on the other hand, Nigeria was able to meet up with the WAEC timetable for WASSCE, that there was already a negotiated timeline to move local language subjects such as Ibo, Hausa and Yoruba behind to enable all participating countries the needed period to take the general subjects at the same time.
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According to the minister, the Ministry of Education had scheduled a meeting with relevant stakeholders for July 30 to assess readiness towards safe reopening of schools.
“The Ghanaians will take examinations peculiar to them. But they are all in the first part of the time table so we will work out a domestication module that will take our peculiar subjects behind after we have done generals.
“This will buy us the time we need for all of us to be at par with the rest of West Africa and operating at the same time because the unanimity with which WAEC has always worked is still very important to us.
“Nigeria is not moving away from it, the option would have been to go to November to take the GCE external exams. Nigeria is carefully studying that if in the event everything fails, we may go to that way,” he said.
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