JAMB: 2021 UTME records mass failure as only 15% scored above 200

The 2021 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) conducted by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, recorded poor performance by the candidates, as only 15 per cent of the total candidate that sat for the exams scored above 200 out of the available 400 marks.

In figure, only 168,613 out of the 1.13 million that sat for the exams scored more than 200.

In comparison, this is worse than last year’s candidates’ performance where 404,740 of the 1.9 million students scored above 200. This means about 21 per cent of the total candidates scored above 200.

In 2020, a total of 2.11 million applicants sought admission into tertiary institutions in Nigeria, with over 300,000 direct entry applicants who needed not to write UTME.

This year, 1,428,208 applied and over 300,000 were also direct entry candidates.

According to the breakdown of the performance of candidates in 2021, as given by JAMB, 64,323 scored 190-199, and 90,688 scored between 180 and 189 marks.

117,970 scored between 170 and 179 marks and 149,421 scored between 160 and 169 marks.

On the other hand, 369,023 candidates scored between 140 to 159 marks while 170,816 scored between 130 and 139 marks.

Oyo State has the highest number of candidates with 82,521, followed by Osun with 74, 234 and Ogun with 70,971.

Meanwhile, NewsWireNGR had earlier reported that the JAMB directed tertiary institutions in the country to decide their minimum cut-off mark for admission.

This is unlike previous years where the body usually stipulates a minimum benchmark such as 180 for universities.