Oyo State Stops Payment Of WAEC Fees

OYO State government has stopped further payment of West African Examinations Council (WAEC) registration fees of students in public schools in the state, commencing from the 2015/2016 academic session in September.

The government alluded the poor financial status of the state government and lackadaisical attitude of parents and students to promotion of quality education as reason for the decision.

Head of Service, Mr Soji Eniade, in a statement on Wednesday, said this was evidenced on the data on student enrolment and performance of students in WAEC examination in the last seven years.

The data revealed that between June 2007 and June 2013, only 14.27 per cent of 396,579 students that enrolled for the public examination passed.



While the government had spent N2,067,545,050 on the examination compared to the value of the number of students that passed, which amounted to N315,513.900.

In addition, the yearly mock examinations will henceforth, be conducted for final year students. This, the government noted was to ensure that only serious and quality students were presented by the state for public examinations.

Also, students will now pay N1,000 per term as Education Development Levy. The fund gathered would be utilised to compliment government’s effort at improving infrastructure in public secondary schools.

Other measures to improve students’ performance in state schools include that students must have 80 per cent attendance in class.

This, the statement said had become a prerequisite for promotion to higher classes.

Furthermore, extramural classes for students in JSS3 and SSS3 would be enhanced, while students in public secondary schools would proceed to the next class only if they passed their promotion examination. Henceforth, automatic promotion of students had been cancelled.

To ensure monitoring, Zonal Education Monitoring Committees will be inaugurated in all the eight educational zones of the state, in line with the provision of the Universal Basic Education (UBE) Act.

The mandate of the committee, to report to the government monthly, will be to monitor schools within the zones to ensure zero level of students’ truancy and social ills within and outside schools’ premises.