Lagos begins placement test into public schools

By Olasunkanmi Akoni

LAGOS—Lagos State government has said henceforth, admission of pupil into its public secondary schools will be through a placement examination to be conducted throughout the state.

Already, the government has set Saturday, July 5 for the placement test for admission into the state public secondary schools for the 2014/15 academic session.

The test will be conducted in 300 centers across the state.

Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Olayinka Oladunjoye , who disclosed this at an interactive session with parents, teachers and other stakeholders in the education sector, said the essence of the placement test was to test the ability of the pupils to cope with the rigours of academics at the secondary level, train and prepare them on how to sit and write examinations as well as prepare them psychologically for secondary schools’ education.

Oladunjoye, explained that pupils were expected to obtain 50 percent average scores in English and Mathematics in addition to 50 percent cumulative scores in the examinations before they could be considered for admission into public secondary schools.

According to her, the introduction of the personalized Optical Mark Reader, OMR, system would go a long way in eliminating the incidence of examination malpractices as each answer sheet had been personalized for each candidate with his or her passport photograph boldly embolden on the answer sheet.