The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, on Wednesday said the board may reduce the timeline for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) from three hours to two hours.
Similarly, Use of English that used to have 100 questions will be reduced to 60 questions while the other subjects will be reduced to 40 questions each.
He further stated that question papers will be uploaded five minutes to the examinations in order to check malpractice and questions leakage.
He made this known during the Strategic Planning retreat on Supervision and Evaluation of 2017 UTME examinations.
He said: “As for the 2017 UTME, it is likely we reduce the duration of the examinations. We are looking at two hours for the examinations instead of the present three-hour timeline. This is in line with international best practices.
“As for the candidates, for their age, the maximum time they can sit for examinations is two hours. Even in terms of international standard, for primary school pupils, the maximum time for examinations is between 45 minutes and one hour.”
He said JAMB has embraced new technology which will make the UTME comfortable to write by students in privileged environment and those in rural areas.
He equally confirmed that about 300,000 candidates might sit for the mock UTME examinations on April 8 which will be used to test run its new technology to make its examinations easier for students.