Delta Education Ministry commences digital test item generation

Delta State Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education has commenced a process of examination digitalization for online generation of test items.

Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Mr. Patrick Ukah, disclosed this in Asaba yesterday (08/02/2021) during the opening ceremony of a workshop on generation of test items for 2021 Cognitive/Placement and Basic  Education Certificate Examinations.

The Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, who said that the workshop was aimed at generating test items that would measure the teaching and learning outcomes in adherence with the provisions in the school curriculum, noted that the initiative would create platform to review the past evaluative instruments in order to generate new ones for the enrichment of the question banks.

Ukah reiterated that in tandem with the provisions and regulations of the National Council on Education (NCE) on examinable subjects, the ministry considered and approved new subject thematic areas for the school system effective 2018/2019 academic year.

In his welcome address, the Director of Examinations and Standards, Mr. Sunday Egomagwuna, who said that assessment instruments to be generated must cover all the three learning domains such as cognitive, affective and psychomotor, stressed that the items must be valid, reliable, usable and effective as instruments capable of measuring required standards.

Egomagwuna disclosed that each participant was expected to generate fifty multiple choice, five essay type, two practical type and two project type questions as applicable to their subject areas, and underscored the importance of uniformity in scoring of test items in all the marking centres in the state.

He expressed dismay that some pupils who sat for the last Cognitive Placement examination found it difficult to shade properly on the Optical Marks Reader (OMR) sheets because they were not using HB pencils and called on parents and other stakeholders to educate their children on how to shade their answer sheets in future examinations.