Oyo State Government has said that its decision to cancel automatic promotion in public secondary schools was informed by the large percentage of failures recorded in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination, WAEC.
Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Toye Arulogun, in a statement yesterday insisted that government would not go back on the decision which he described as part of efforts to reform the state’s education sector.
Arulogun stated that no amount of protests would change the government’s position on automatic promotion.
He said: “It is unacceptable for Oyo State to occupy the rung of the ladder position in the Senior School Certificate Examination.
“We should be setting the pace, the state is known for many firsts and her education sector should be the benchmark for others.’’
The statement noted that the ongoing reforms in the education sector were inevitable because of the persistent failure in the SSCE over the past 15 years.
“The WAEC examination is a key yardstick for performance measurement and the statistics we have from the Ministry of Education strongly supports the state government’s stance.
“In 2008, out of the 61,232 that wrote the examination, only 5,608 passed, while only 7,204 passed out of the 60,444 the following year.
“In 2010, 65,330 sat for the WAEC examination , 8,757 passed, in 2011, 72,559 sat for the examination and 12,314 passed while in 2012, there were 75, 179 candidates and 12,314 passed.
“The situation has been the same in the last three years. In 2013, 74,319 wrote the examination, 16,049 passed, in the year 2014, 77,685 sat for the examination and 16,197 passed and in 2015, there were 78,897 candidates and 17,051 passed”, he added.
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