The long awaited result of the first phase of the Olatoye Sugar Foundation (OSF) Inter-Secondary Schools Examination organized for both Public and Private Schools has been released.
The Inter-School examination initiated by the Founder of OSF, honourable member representing Lagelu/Akinyele federal constituency and Chairman House Committee on Urban Development and Regional Planning.Hon. Olatoye Temitope Sugar was organized solely to restore Oyo state to its pace setter status in education sector.
According to him ‘‘there is urgent need to address the issue of poor academic performance in the Nigerian Secondary Schools especially in our dear Oyo State. Government should increase funding and monitoring of schools, quantity and quality of teachers should be seriously looked into as well through recruitment of more qualified teachers and on-job training for teachers / school administrators. Motivation of teachers through increased take-home pay and improved conditions of service so they can put more efforts at ensuring that students do well in their academics is vital. Curriculum planners and the ministry of education should review textbooks for instruction in schools in relation to their suitability for preparing students for senior school examinations. Parents should also give more attention to the academic progress of their wards so as to add extra-mural lessons for students where necessary for improved academic performance.’’
Hon. Sugar implore students that have performed well in this examination not to relent in their preparedness for a brighter future while those that are lagging behind should also put more efforts so as to reposition themselves for a challenging but highly rewarding future based on academic excellence.
While reacting to the performances of the students’ after the collation of results, the examiners said ‘‘it is evident that average performance of students in different zones are slightly better off than one another with Ibarapa Zone having the least score of 18%, followed by Ogbomosho with 30%. Oyo has 36% while Oke Ogun and Ibadan zones have 28% and 56% respectively. Except for Ibadan where students’ performance is slightly above average, the average performance in other zones of Oke-Ogun, Ogbomosho, Ibarapa and Oyo is far less than 50% in the examination comprising core subjects of English Language, Mathematics and few of Civics.
The aim of this examination was to reward academic excellence in all the 33 Local Government Areas and 35 Local Council Development Authority (LCDA’s) in Oyo State through the test of students’ readiness for the senior secondary school examinations in the major subjects of English Language (45%) and Mathematics (45%) which are core pre-requisite for admission into higher institutions of learning as well as the awareness of happenings in their environment through civics/current affairs (10%).
The questions for the examination were basically adapted from the past examination questions of the West African Examination Council, National Examination Council and very few from the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board’s past questions. Hence, the students were expected to have attempted the questions set with less difficulty.
As a matter of emphasis, in English Language, students generally did not do well in content and expression with simple and correct tenses in essay / letter writing part of the test. Also, performance in lexis and structure was far below average.
In Mathematics, students generally did well on the average but scored poorly majorly in questions relating to word problems, longitude and latitude, bearing and trigonometry. We implore subject instructors to do more on these areas.
There were impressive performances in Civics/Current Affairs related questions without which the examiner strongly believes that, the general performance would have been poorer than it were.’’
Recall that the examination was held on the 28th of April, 2018 in Ibadan, Igboora, Ogbomoso, Oke-Ogun and Oyo respectively.
Having gone through the first round of the examination, students that will participate in the next round (involving written examination and quiz/debate) should put up a more improved performance to showcase the best students in Oyo State because, at the end of the exercise, the second runner up will be given a year scholarship and a laptop while the first runner up will be given 2 years scholarship, a laptop and five desktops for his or her school and the winner will be sponsored fully throughout his or her higher education in a federal or state school, he or she will be given a brand new laptop and his or her school will be provided with a brand new hummer bus.
Below is the result, names of schools and students who participated in the inter-school examination.
