The Federal Government is planning a major shift in how students move through Nigeria’s education system, with proposals to scrap the Junior Secondary School Common Entrance Examination and replace it with a nationwide tracking framework.
At the centre of the plan is a new Learner Identification Number (LIN), which will be assigned to every pupil and used to follow their academic journey from primary school through to secondary level.
Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, said the goal is to move away from one-off exams and instead rely on continuous assessment that reflects a child’s performance over time.
“This will capture a pupil’s progress from primary one,” he said during a media briefing in Lagos. “Even if they change schools, their records will move with them.”
The proposed reform is driven by a troubling gap in Nigeria’s education pipeline.
Government figures show that more than 23 million pupils are currently enrolled in over 50,000 public primary schools. But only about 3 million make it into public junior secondary schools.
That leaves a massive number of children unaccounted for. “Where are the remaining 20 million?” Alausa asked; a question that underscores the scale of the problem.
Officials believe the new tracking system could help provide answers by flagging when students drop out and, crucially, why.
“If a child is expected to be in JSS1 and is not there, we will know,” the minister said.
While poverty is often blamed for low school retention, the government says infrastructure is a major part of the problem.
Alausa pointed to a shortage of secondary schools, arguing that the system simply does not have the capacity to absorb the number of pupils completing primary education. Private schools, he added, cannot fill that gap.
“The issue is access,” he said. “State governments need to build more schools.” Alongside the structural changes, the Federal Government is also looking to revive the school feeding programme, widely seen as a key incentive for getting children into classrooms and keeping them there.
There are also plans to shift the programme under the supervision of the Ministry of Education, in a bid to improve coordination and accountability.
If implemented, the reforms would mark a clear departure from Nigeria’s long-standing reliance on entrance exams, replacing it with a system built on data and continuous evaluation.
But analysts caution that execution will be everything, from maintaining accurate student records to ensuring states have the resources to expand school capacity.
