Does NECO have its own examination syllabuses and regulations?
     Yes. These syllabuses will soon go on sale. But NECO is not in a hurry about such things so as not to upset its candidates that had been working with WAEC syllabuses. NECO shall, in fairness to the candidates, examine them for some time on the existing syllabuses.
    It is, however, pertinent to point out that there should be nothing drastically different about the NECO and WAEC syllabuses because both draw from the Federal Government-prepared and approved national curricula for secondary schools.
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Who will regulate the standards of NECO and WAEC certificates to ensure that politics does not over-ride professionalism in the certification process?
     If there was, before now, a body that regulated standard of WAEC certificates vis-à-vis those of University of London or Cambridge, for instance, that body should still be in place to continue its job unless some law commands otherwise. In such a case, the law should also create a replacement.
    However, beyond the dictates of legislation, professionalism builds into an examination outfit certain quality controls that it can only ignore at its peril. If an examination body goes political, for instance, instead of remaining professional, recipients of its certificates may not be able to defend their grades and stakeholders would lose confidence in such certificates. Such a body would be dealing a deathblow on itself. NECO knows better than to be involved in such an unprofessional game.
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NECO is an untested examination body. Should it not have understudied some other appropriate examination body, as WAEC did the Cambridge University syndicate before being saddled with the conduct of SSCE?
     NECO is not a brand new examination outfit. It inherited the assets (both human and otherwise) of the National Board for Educational Measurement (NBEM) which had been in the business of conducting examinations since 1992. The validity of NBEM selection and other certification processes can be attested to by the performances of students that have taken its examinations in the Federal Government Academy, Suleja, Federal Government Colleges and other schools. The manpower that was involved in these examinations remains and has been beefed up because of the addition of the SSCE to NBEM stable of examinations, at its metamorphosis into NECO.
    Moreover, the pioneer Registrar of NECO is a professor of measurement and evaluation. He is being supported by a team of holders of Ph.D and Master's degrees in measurement and evaluation and other highly experienced former teachers in secondary and tertiary institutions. This is not to talk of other support staff who are experts in their own fields and also members of the NECO family.
    At the time WAEC was constituted in 1952, it did not have the human resources NECO has. It was also a green examination outfit, with nothing on the ground prior to that. It was, therefore, necessary for it to have undergone the period of tutelage it underwent.
    The NECO situation is different. It had years of experience in the business of public examination even at its "creation". And it is endowed with a calibre of experts in measurement that WAEC could not boast of and data processing/information technology that WAEC could not dream of then.
    The maiden NECO SSCE outing is a demonstration of the claims. Put in the context of the fact that NECO had to handle almost 900,000 candidates, as against a few thousand that WAEC had to battle with in its maiden joint examinations, and yet release their results within three months of completion of these examinations, one would realize that NECO has what it takes to deliver.
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NECO registered and published results for some candidates in subjects for which they did not enrol and failed to register them for, and release their results in those they actually enrolled and sat examinations in. Is this not a mark of incompetence on NECO's part?
     It may surprise many people to hear that NECO does not register or fail to register any candidate for any subject. The truth is that whatever subjects appear against any candidate's name are what appear in his/her registration form.
    All candidates are expected to complete and shade their "computer" registration forms and ensure their accuracy personally. The only thing NECO does, thereafter, is to pass those forms through the computer system which captures and prints out whatever the candidate had already shaded on the form. So, every "error" recorded is the responsibility of the candidate and not NECO's.
    Moreover, the NECO regulation is that if a candidate sits an examination in a subject (s)he is not registered for, (s)he cannot receive a result in that subject. If school principals carefully supervise their students when filling out their registration forms, many of these problems would not arise.
    As for publishing results in subjects candidates did not register for, this is simply impossible. For one reason, there is no human entry of marks for any candidate at the NECO end as to warrant an error in entry. The continuous assessment scores are entered and shaded on computer readable forms by the candidate's school. Responses from objective tests are shaded by candidates themselves and the computer captures and scores them without intervention from NECO staff. Moreover, the essay examination scores are entered and shaded by examiners themselves on computer readable forms. Without any of these segment scores, no full grading would be published. So, whatever comes out in the final printout of NECO results must be what the candidate merits.
    It might be a good idea whenever the impression is created that grades are returned for candidates in subjects they did not register for the principal of the school to check more carefully to ensure that (s)he is checking the correct entries on the NECO result sheet.
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What more should people know about NECO?