The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has said it does not decide on the uniform cut-off mark for the national Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME.
JAMB said cut-off marks are decided during a policy meeting constituted by all the Heads of the Institutions in attendance and chaired by the Hon. Minister of Education.
Fabian Benjamin, the Head, Public Affairs and Protocol of JAMB, disclosed that institutions deliberate upon the admission guidelines from individual institutions and their preferred minimum admission scores.
Benjamin was reacting to a comment on the cut-off mark by a former President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, Prof. Nasir Fagge.
He disclosed that JAMB conducts the examination and hands over the result to the institutions to decide the cut-off mark.
Benjamin also disclosed that institutions rely on the Central Admissions Processing System in deciding cut-off marks.
The statement reads partly: “There is nothing like a uniform minimum national Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) score for any of the tiers of tertiary institutions and neither does the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board decide any such requirement for any institution.
“The Board does not and has never determined any uniform national UTME scores otherwise known as cut-off mark by the general public for any tertiary institution because, in actual sense, there are no uniform national UTME scores.
“The lucid process of admission which the former President of the Academic Staff Union of University, Prof. Nasir Fagge, expounded and which was published in Premium Times is the exact process being followed in the conduct of admission exercise to tertiary institutions in the country.
“This process has even been improved upon with the elimination of human interference through its full automation with the introduction of the Central Admissions Processing system(CAPS).”