Underage children have been banned by the Federal Government from participating in the National Common Entrance Examination for admission into Unity Schools across the country, while directing the National Examination Council, NECO, to put stringent measures in place in order to prevent underage persons from registering for the examination, including making birth certificates mandatory as a registration requirement.
The announcement was made by the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, David Andrew Adejo in Abuja.
The Informant247 gathered that a total of 72,821 candidates sat for the examination on Saturday nationwide.
Adejo noted that candidates should have attained at least 12 years before admission into secondary school.
The Permanent Secretary monitored the conduct of the 2023 Common Entrance Examination into the 110 Federal Government Colleges across the federation, at both the Federal Government Girls College, Bwari, and Government Day Secondary School, Bwari, in FCT, while expressing his displeasure over the number of underage persons participating in the examination.
“This year, I have advice for parents, and I beg you, take this advice to any single home you know. We are killing our children by allowing underage children to write the common entrance examination.
“Let our children get to appropriate age before writing this exam and we are going to make sure NECO put in place appropriate checks. We didn’t want to get to where we will say bring birth certificate but that is the stage we are going to now. In registering also upload the child’s birth certificate, so that at our own end, we are able to cut some of these things,” he said.