AS recent as the mid 1970s, school leavers could apply for employment in any organisation or seek for admission into any institution of higher learning by merely waving their mock West African School Certificate result. The mock examination was mostly organised by state ministries of education or individual schools and was the reliable barometer school administrators needed to gauge the performance of their students when they get to write the real school certificate examinations.

Today, mock examinations have gone out of fashion; they are dead!  Potential employers no longer touch it even though the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), still risk admitting students who are awaiting their results. Candidates are no longer required to include their mock results when they fill JAMB forms; the space no longer exists on the forms because, like a bad dream, schools and state ministries of education no longer have the time or resources to conduct mock examinations. Officials of federal and state ministries of education, many of them products of the old system, no longer see the reason for its re-introduction.  In the few public schools where a semblance of this ‘old school’ practice is in still in vogue, it is  at best, a mere charade; an unimaginative way by some unimaginative government officials to squeeze something out of an unimaginative  system.

The situation is not helped by desperate parents and guardians who do unimaginable things to abet examination malpractice. These days, most parents sit back and wish for a return to the old days when they went to school, forgetting, in the process, that ‘in those days’ they were fortunate to pass through the hands of teachers whose ilk is now extinct. The result is that, today, parents go the whole hog to abet examination malpractice without addressing the cause of their wards’ dismal performance. Such parents see only the hands ranging from those of the National Examinations Council (NECO), the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), NABTEB or JAMB, and not their own hands, when apportioning blames as to the cause of high failure rate in school examinations.

Like parents, students do not help the resolution of the problem. In today’s jet age when modern technology should assist students to become high performers, the best we have are students who predict with precision the players Sir Alex Ferguson will field against Arsene Wenger’s team or who the next coach of Real Madrid FC would be. Few parents see nothing wrong with this because fewer parents, either because they too, just like their wards, are soccer addicts or under the guise of being too busy, see no need to monitor their wards. What, on earth, has become of the time-tested perception of the home being the child’s first and best school?

For the serious minded students, they arrive at hostile environments that pass for schools in 21st century Nigeria. The sight of hostels with blown off roofs here and decrepit classrooms with no furniture there gives an impression that they have arrived at a real war zone in the real sense of the word. Of course libraries are a rare sight in many schools in modern day Nigeria and those of them with a bias for science have no space for laboratories. What is more, students are often left in the care of barely literate, ill-prepared and ill-motivated teachers most of whom will flunk examinations meant for their students. In their ill-prepared state, some teachers stare blankly at the blank faces of their students and, like their students, they too make a quick dash for the bush when the need arises. Most school environments are so hostile that by the time students are presented for NECO and WAEC examinations they are barely in the right frame of mind to pass. Because they are ill-prepared many students go into examination halls, chew the end of their pens and look up to ceilings for answers that would not come, thanks to effective monitoring of examinations, at the end of which they swagger out to pursue some unimaginative ventures. Not a few examiners have, in recent times, spoken of scripts that carry funny appeals such as Help me sir, I am an orphan, God will help you or encountering blank answer scripts blotted with darkish substance, juju style, complete with incantations in the vain hope that some spirits will cause the examiner to award a pass mark for a blank script.

For governments, we can only beg the issue to assume they do not know what to do. It is equally wrong to assume that enough funds are not being made available to schools. What schools receive may still be a far cry from international expectations, but more could still be achieved if the scant funds are effectively applied and not end in private accounts. The idea of a fraction of budgeted funds getting to schools merely provides school heads a ready excuse to complain of insufficient funds. By continuously shifting blame, we create the impression that schooling is a punishment. Let recreation flourish in schools and let students go through the rigours of mock examinations. Importantly, somebody should make it mandatory for school teachers to attend NECO and WAEC moderation and marking exercises because these are tools teachers and students stand to gain from; not the money guzzling and farcical refresher programmes organised for teachers.

The way it is, examination bodies have their hands full and, like the Achebean eneke bird, they have to constantly remain in the sky safe from the hunter’s pellets. Effective mirroring and policing of national education is the main challenge faced by examination bodies worldwide. And to do this entails being constantly ahead of lazy and cheating students and their patrons. This is no mean task, even under normal circumstances! It is okay to focus the searchlight on examination bodies if the ultimate aim is to improve standards. But when they are unduly harassed and haunted and distracted, as is now being done, the impression is created that what examination bodies need to do to remain in business is to impress some fat cows by awarding bogus and untenable grades to candidates.

• Magaji is based in Abuja.