By FUNMILAYO ADEYEMI

The Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) on Thursday, conducted the 2023 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) Mock in 725 centres across the country.

This is disclosed in a statement by the Head, Public Affairs and Protocol of the board, Dr Fabian Benjamin and made available to newsmen in Abuja.

Benjamin said: “As previously anticipated, the exercise witnessed some hitches in a few centres with some candidates unable to sit for the examination.”

He said these candidates would be rescheduled to sit for the examination at a date to be announced later at no cost to them.

“The board will look at all issues thrown up by the mock exercise and act accordingly for a better and enhanced exercise.

“The introduction of the Mock-UTME by the board was aimed at providing the board with the opportunity to assess innovations that will be used for the main examination as well as allow candidates to have hands-on experiences on the CBT environment.

“The exercise, which was introduced over six years ago, has availed the board of a unique opportunity to trial innovations that have significantly improved on the its ability to deliver world-class assessment exercise,” he said.

It would be recalled that before the conduct of the 2023 exercise, the board had, in a statement, disclosed that it would be introducing some new measures that had never been used before as opportunity to assess their functionality.

“The board will want to use this opportunity to apologise to all candidates for any inconvenience they may have experienced on account of this.

“This is part of a development process aimed at enhancing the board’s efforts at improving the quality, security and sanctity of its services and as well as using same to herald the next phase of its transformational agenda.

“The exercise also gave the board the rare opportunity of fine-tuning this process for better results,” he added.

According to him, the board expresses its appreciation to the candidates and their parents for their understanding and pledges to ensure that the system for which their sacrifice is made is perfected.

He emphasised that the gains from the exercise could not be quantified as the board had taken note of the challenges thrown up and had, consequently, been better placed to deliver a seamless UTME exercise in April, in line with its projections.

He appealed to candidates and the general public for their understanding as it would not relent in its efforts to devise new and better ways of enhancing the quality of large-scale assessments in Nigeria. (NAN)

Update news