Despite the claim by the registrar of the National Examination Council, NECO, Professor Promise Okpalla, that there was a slight improvement in the performance of students who took part in the external senior secondary examination of Nov/Dec 2011, the number of candidates who passed English language has remained low.
The NECO examination also recorded low enrolment of less than 50 per cent even as it was marred by malpractice.
An analysis of the result made available to journalists, yesterday, in Minna showed that less than 10 percent of the candidates who sat for the external examination passed English Language with credit and above.
There was, however, an improvement in the pass level of Mathematics which recorded an unprecedented 41 per cent credit and above in the exam as against the 17 per cent recorded in 2010.
The number of candidates’ enrolment dropped, as only 104,187 candidates sat for the exam as against 235, 933 in 2010.
The analysis presented by the registrar also showed that there were 22,680 cases of examination malpractice with Rivers State recording the highest percentage while Mathematics registered the highest percentage of malpractice associated with a single subject.
The Registrar disclosed that the drop in the number of candidates who sat for the examination of the council was due to the checks and balances introduced by the council to curtail examination malpractice.
He specifically disclosed that the introduction of biometric data detection machine to check impersonation discouraged the external candidates who were usually candidates who registered to remedy their result.
According to him, the council will not be deterred by the low candidates’ enrolment, pointing out that “it is better to have few quality candidates than to have a hall full of cheats”.