Conducting Examination in Nigerian Universities: The Quandary of Missing Scripts and Scores

Abstract

The purpose of this research work was to assess the causes, consequences and remedies to the incidence of missing scripts and scores in the course of conducting examination in Nigerian universities. The design of this study was survey research design. The sample for the study consisted of 360 students and 140 lecturers randomly selected from three universities in North Central Nigeria using simple random sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was structured questionnaire developed by the researcher and anchored on a continuum of strongly agree to strongly disagree. To carry out the study three research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while three hypotheses were tested using t-test statistic. The result indicated that the incidence of missing scripts and scores in university could arise when the secretary who types results mistakenly omit some students’ vital details, when students do not follow instructions to indicate their individual information correctly and also due to careless attitude of lecturers during marking and scoring of scripts among other factors. The result indicated that one of the consequences of missing scripts and scores is that many brilliant students have been denied good grades and better class of degrees on graduation with many other deleterious effects on students. The result revealed that there was no significant difference in the opinions of students and lecturers on the causes, consequences and remedies to the incidence of missing scripts and scores in universities. It is recommended that examiners should always ensure that the number of scripts they collect tallies with the number of candidates present in the examination hall and avoidance of marking of scripts in public places. Besides there should be good storage of examination scripts and the university authority should if possible, ensure that there is back up for scripts through scanning.