As part of modalities to checkmate the spate of examination failure, especially in NECO, WAEC and JAMB, forced career choices made by parents on their children have been identified as a major root cause.
This was disclosed by the chief executive secretary of NABTEB, Dr Olatunde Aworanti during his presentation at the national examination summit held in Abuja. He said the attitude of many parents has not helped the education sector in terms of quality results.
He accused parents of forcing their children to read professional courses like medicine, architecture, engineering and law, among several others without taking into cognizance the abilities and level of assimilation of the children which he said pose a detriment to the child.
He advised parents to allow their children to choose courses by themselves and the subject combination to facilitate such, revealing that with hard work, dedication and perseverance, each child could make it to the top if given the opportunity.
He said that already, there has been a misconception of technical schools which has also grossly affected the performance of many who see it as a second option or last resort. He disclosed that in a subject like motor vehicles mechanical works, statistics showed that 63.4%. 56.6%, 37.1%, 85.5% and 81.4% failed in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 respectively.
He posited that other factors responsible for examination failure include inadequate coverage of syllabus and non-familiarity with test format foundation factors, poor reading culture, wrong subject combination, and lack of common knowledge of common pitfalls.
Others which were further subdivided are institutional, environmental/structural, societal, psycho-social, home/parental, as well as teachers and students factors.