We don’t decide Cut-off Mark – JAMB

Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has said it is the responsibility of tertiary institutions to decide and determine admission cut-off marks for candidates and not the examination body.

JAMB spokesman, Dr. Fabian Benjamin, in a statement, yesterday, said: “The truth is that there is nothing like a national minimum UTME score for all universities, polytechnics or colleges of education in Nigeria. It’s only individual institutions that set their minimum entry scores based on their peculiarities. JAMB has no role whatsoever in the decision of the institutions to determine how or with what criteria they want to admit. The role of JAMB is to ensure that the goalpost is not shifted in the middle of the game.

“Candidates must also know that UTME score is not the sole determinant of placement of candidates into tertiary institutions. As such, the undue attention to the so-called UTME cut-off point is a major conception of many ill-informed candidates who assumed that they have finally attained the benchmark having achieved the so-called minimum national score or cut-off point for admission.”

Benjamin said JAMB conducts UTME and hands over the results to institutions for the conduct of admissions. He said before the admission exercise commences, a policy meeting is held with all heads of the institutions in attendance chaired by the Minister of Education.

“At the meeting, the admission guidelines, which include recommendations from individual institutions and their preferred minimum admission scores are presented and deliberated upon at the meeting, and not JAMB which is only a member out of large number of participants at the meeting.”