Tunbosun Ogundare – Lagos
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC), on Wednesday, in Lagos, said more than 50 million candidates have sat for its West African Senior School Certificate Examination(WASSCE) in Nigeria alone since inception.
The head of national office, WAEC Nigeria, Mr Patrick Areghan, gave the revelation at the formal launch of the organisation’s Educational Statistics (EDUSTAT) platform in Yaba.
He said WAEC had done greatly over years in terms of students’ assessment and contributions to the socio-economic development of Nigeria and Africa by extension.
He said that is why the organisation is evolving new inventions each day using Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to further strengthen its contributions to national growth and development.
Speaking on the newly launched educational statistics platform, Areghan said the platform would serve as data bank where stakeholders ranging from government and its agencies, corporate bodies, schools, researchers, development partners, parents, students and even journalists, among others, can access accurate and reliable statistics and data about WAEC various examinations, students’ enrollment and graduation rates over the years for one purpose or another.
He explained that with EDUSTAT, WAEC has fully migrated from manual to digital operations, particularly in terms of statistical data that could help users to access, gather, collate, analyse and interpret educational information in statistical and graphical manner anywhere they are globally and make informed decisions with them.
He said the platform which was developed by its technical partner, Sidmach Technologies Nigeria Limited, is multi-tasking in nature as it can be used for various purposes.
He said government at any level for example, can access statistical performance of students in WASSCE and enrollment and graduation rates in a particular year or over some years across the country or from one state to another or by gender, schools or subjects, and so forth.
He said schools and parents could also make an informed decision based on the statistics provided by WAEC on the platform if a particular school for example, is doing well or not and in which subject areas, particularly when compared to another school either in a particular locality or anywhere nationwide.
“The researchers as well as you the journalists and development partners can also make use of EDUSTAT platform for necessary statistics as they may need them for one purpose or the other,” he added.
Areghan said even though the users of the platform which he said has tight security features and privacy, would have to pay a token amount of money to access the needed materials on it, the benefits of the statistics and easy access to them are unquantifiable.
He said WAEC as a leading light examination organisation in sub-Saharan Africa would continue to evolve innovations to make its various services more users’ friendly and according to the best global practices.
READ ALSO FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
