CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The history of evaluation in the Nigeria education system is not easy to trace perhaps its first mention was expressed in the form of ordinance that put in place in 1882, among the provisions of these ordinance were that of the following criteria been set for grants for teachers’ salaries. First, grant for organization and discipline with special grants to schools, which obtain the area of percentage of passes and reached high standard of academic excellence. Secondly, a captivation passes grant for each subject. In 1889, another ordinance was enacted and it started in part that on grant would be made in aid of any school except that the school in public examination shall have attained prerequisite percentage of eiciency. This explains the place of evaluation and testing students in the school curriculum, evaluation was relatively simple because it comes at the end of the year’s programme. In the secondary schools, there was a highly selective system of evaluation practice. Passport into secondary school was an organized written examination followed by an oral interview. There were term and final examination which most schools depend on for the purpose of promotion. One of the most important hallmarks of the National Policy on Education (1981) is the provision of the continuous assessment as an effective tool for wholly a partly assessment and evaluating the student’s learning outcomes in the various level of our educational system. This continuous assessment is presently been run in secondary schools as it was introduced. In 1982, the National Policy on Education (1981) provides a six year primary education, three years Junior secondary education, three years secondary education.
Tertiary education and four years University, each of which level would be allowed to implement the continuous assessment as laid down by the federal ministry of education. it is marked by intention to make students specialized early enough in the future careers. Most importantly, it has provisions for making drop outs employee. This new system of education will replace the formal one final examination system, which has outlined its usefulness. The formal examination system has been criticized for its short comings. It is a common knowledge that very many students roam about the street during most of the school year, only to the classroom a week or two before the promotion examination to do any serious work. They are not serious for any academic work because they have not prepared themselves for such tasks. This underscores the point why eminent scholars have argued that examination is not a true test of ones’ ability. There has been an occasion when some students commit suicide because of failing examination. It should be revealed that examination on high predicated on the cognitive aspect of the student’s learning and tended to ignore affective and psychomotor aspects. It consequently creates our students and examination consciousness and an appetite for memorization and regurgitation of fact which in turn tend to stifle their inflection thinking.