AS Nigerian students continue to grapple with the challenge of high failure rate in national examinations, LearnAfrica plc has described as heart warming the recently released result of the June/July 2013 Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE), conducted by the National Examination Council (NECO), which revealed significant improvement in students’ performance as well as a reduction in the incidence of examination malpractice.
Statistics of the results released indicated that about 70 percent of candidates obtained five credits above, an improvement of about 18 percent when compared to the 2012 figure of about 52 percent.
Ina chat with the Guardian, Head of Marketing, and Learn Africa Plc., Mr. Allwell Nwankwo, said the company has been a firm advocate of improved learning outcomes for students across the country.
Besides, he attributed the improved outcomes to quality teaching by teachers, hard work by students, availability of quality resources and seamless administration of the examination body.
Congratulating NECO, schools, teachers and the students for the impressive, he noted that company, which has been investing in education for decades, is satisfied with the result.
He said “As partners in progress with NECO, we are quite delighted that students are taking up the challenge to perform at their optimum at the NECO examinations. We have no doubt that there is still room for improvement. That is why we are investing in motivating Nigerian students through the LearnAfrica-NECO Excellence Awards and other initiatives of our foundation.”
It will be recalled that in 2012, the corporate social responsibility arm of the company, the LearnAfrica education development foundation, instituted the excellence awards to recognize and reward outstanding NECO candidates, schools and teachers in all states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Nwankwo said, “once again, we are set to reward outstanding candidates, schools and teachers. We request that candidates and schools watch out for the announcement of the 2013 LearnAfrica-NECO excellence award-winners. In the same vein, we wish to call upon local and state governments to recognize and reward the award-winners as some did last year. By so doing, the governments will be sending a clearly motivating message to the young ones that hard work and diligence have their reward.”
With the success of last year’s awards, some state governments decided to grant scholarships to some of the award-winners.
According to him, the company is committed to funding the awards for the next five years and also called on other corporate organizations to partner by sponsoring specific awards under the auspices of the LearnAfrica-NECO excellence awards.
