Oyo State government on Wednesday disclosed that the state recorded its best result in WASSCE examinations in 18 years, saying that its 54.18% passed rate of students with minimum of 5 credits including Mathematics and English in this year’s examination was very encouraging when compared to the National passed average of 59%.
The government stated that 29,174 candidates representing 54.14 have a minimum of five (5) credits pass out of the 53,850 who sat for the exam, noting that the 29,174 candidates comprise of 13,884 males and 15,290 females.
The State Commissioner for Information, Culture and Tourism, Mr. Toye Arulogun who released the figures on Wednesday in Ibadan, posited that the 2017 average results have an improvement ratio of above 100% over the 2016 results which stood at 22.12%
The commissioner pointed out that the improvement was as a result of government’s renewed commitment and efforts to reverse the downward trend in the performances of students in WAEC examinations as well as NECO, noting that the state also came second in the 2016 NECO results ranking.
Arulogun stated that the State government is awaiting the statistics on state basis from WAEC which was said to have been concluded on September 5, 2017 and will soon be dispatched to each state according to a correspondence from WAEC Head of National Office, Mr. Olu Adenipekun to the Secretary to the Oyo State Government.
He stated that the state recorded 4.40% in 1999, 3.59% in 2000, 8.7% in 2001, 6.93% in 2002, 6.13% in 2003, 9.17% in 2004, 7.89% in 2005, 10.40% in 2006, 6.16% in 2007, 9.14% in 2008, 11.92% in 2009, 13.40% in 2010, 16.97% in 2011, 21.35% in 2012, 21.79% in 2013, 19.19% in 2014 and 21.61% in 2015.
The Commissioner said that the improved performance did not come as a surprise, saying that the State Government introduced several policies to re-engineer the education sector in the state for improved performances at both the internal and external examinations.
Arulogun said that Iseyin Local Government recorded 67.64%, followed by Ibadan South West 67.53%, Irepo 66.18%, Oyo West 63.95%, Ido 63.62 as the top five local governments, adding that Ibarapa North with 34.89, Surulere with 29.11, Ogbomoso South with27.95, Itesiwaju 21.01 with and Iwajowa local Government with 10.28 have the least of candidates with a minimum of 5 Credits including Mathematics and English.
According to him, “this is below our target as we are competing both within ourselves and at the national level. We want to reclaim our status as the Pace Setter and so many policies have been introduced to ensure that our aspirations regarding quality education for the people of the state are achieved.
“We have cancelled automatic promotion in our schools, introduced the School Government Board (SGB) OYOMESI, Education Trust Fund ETF, WAEC Boot Camp, and Extra Mural classes, Staff review for optimization of workforce. These and many other state government’s Initiatives are already yielding fruitful results and we will not rest on our oars,” the government spokesman explained.
