The federal government has banned children under 12 from taking the National Common Entrance Examination for admission to Unity Schools throughout the country. The federal government instructed the National Examination Council (NECO) to implement strict procedures such as requiring birth documents for registration to prevent minors from registering for the examination.
David Andrew Adejo, the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, announced this Saturday in Abuja.
On Saturday, across the country, 72,821 applicants took the test.
Before being admitted to secondary school, Adejo said that applicants needed be at least 12 years old.
According to him,
“This year, I have advice for parents, and I beg you, take this advice to any single home you know. We are killing our children by allowing underage children to write the common entrance examination.
Let our children get to the appropriate age before writing this exam and we are going to make sure NECO put in place appropriate checks. We didn’t want to get to where we will say bring birth certificate but that is the stage we are going to now. In registering also upload the child’s birth certificate, so that at our own end, we are able to cut some of these things”.
cc: Daily Post Ng
