The best candidate in the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculations Examination, UTME, Ekene Franklin, has received another award for his excellent performance, as he emerged the best in the 2019 American Mathematics Competition (AMC).
During his decoration along with some other students across South West by International Academy for the Gifted LTD, IA GIFTED, Franklin stated that he was not surprised with his outstanding performance even as he expressed concern over Nigeria’s school curriculum.
“I feel great to be honoured and despite my good performance, I still consider it as a challenge when compared with some of the students that took part in the exam from China and USA,” he said. “I would have loved to be better prepared before I sat for the exam because majority of the questions I answered were not in line with normal mathematics in my school,” he added.
Principal Consultant at IA GIFTED, Professor Adewale Solarin, who reacted to the development, said for those who doubted Franklin’s performance in UTME because the exam was a multiple choice, AMC had once again authenticated his ability.
He explained that the exam is aimed at preparing Nigerian students to compete favorably with their peers all over the world.
“We have been coordinating AMC exams for nearly a decade now while Kangaroo Sans Frontiers joined three years ago. The exam is for all students in private and public from primary to secondary. “Interestingly, this is not a conventional exam we give to our students in school. We go extra mile to make it a duty that our student’s should be able to compete favorably with other students all over the world. The idea is to challenge the students’ intellect and give them worldview,” he stated.
“We are very happy with the turn out this year. The performance for last year was not as good as this year. We have many medals won by Nigeria students this year. Last year we had about 2,000 students that participated in the exam across the country but this year more than 4,000 participated.”
He therefore called for more participation from government-owned schools. He said the government was not doing enough in area of sensitizing and even training our teachers. Government needs to organize workshops periodically for teachers, as it will affect performance of students.
The National Coordinator for the Academy, Fabowale Oyebola, stated that students who received such medals and certificates could leverage their brilliant performance to seek admission overseas. He added that all they would do was to upload their score along with their CV.
