Teachers and Students’ Perception on Skipping Senior Secondary Two to Enrol for External Examinations in Southern Nigeria: Implications for Counselling

Abstract

The Nigerian Policy on Education stipulated three years for the Senior Secondary School (SSS) education, after which a student writes one or two external examinations: the West Africa Examination Certificate (WAEC) and the National Examination Council (NECO), but the trend now is students from SS1 moving to SS3 and eventually writing these external examinations, thus skipping SS2. This class skipping encourages examination malpractice because many of the candidates writing the exams are not usually adequately prepared. This is a downward trend for the nation and should be a serious concern for all relevant stakeholders. This paper therefore focuses on finding out the perception of teachers and students in Senior Secondary Schools in the Delta North Senatorial District on the causes of class skipping and who should be blamed most for this act. Purposive random sampling was used in selecting 674 SS students and 102 teachers from 35 schools in the 3 zones in the Senatorial District. The results showed that most students and teachers are aware of the standard regulations of writing external examination at the .. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that there will be an urgent counselling programmes for all relevant stakeholders on the dangers of rushing children in writing WAEC and the NECO.