The Federal Government has unveiled sweeping reforms targeting Nigeria’s basic education system, proposing the abolition of the Junior Secondary School Common Entrance Examination and the introduction of a nationwide student tracking framework.
Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, disclosed the plan during an interactive session with journalists in Lagos, describing it as a strategic move to improve access, retention, and continuity in the education sector.
Under the proposed changes, the current entrance examination will be replaced with a Continuous Assessment (CA) model designed to evaluate pupils throughout their primary education.
“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,” Alausa said.
The minister noted that the reform aims to address persistent gaps in the transition from primary to secondary education, particularly the high number of pupils who fail to advance.
Highlighting the scale of the challenge, he revealed that while over 23 million pupils are enrolled in more than 50,000 public primary schools nationwide, only slightly above 3 million proceed to junior secondary school.
“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.
Alausa attributed the disparity largely to limited access, stressing the urgent need for increased infrastructure at the state level.
“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.
As part of efforts to improve monitoring and accountability, the government also plans to introduce a Learner Identification Number for every pupil from the primary 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.
According to the minister, the system will enable authorities to track academic progress and identify cases of school dropout.
“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 added.
He further revealed that the government is considering reviving the school feeding programme to boost enrolment, with plans to possibly transfer its oversight to the Federal Ministry of Education for improved coordination.
The proposed measures form part of broader reforms aimed at strengthening Nigeria’s education system, improving retention rates, and ensuring more children complete basic schooling.
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