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Mr. Patrick Ukah, Delta’s Basic and Secondary Education Commissioner.

By Magnus Emuji

To ensure faster marking of examination scripts and deliver results on record time, the Delta State Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education has strengthened it’s Examinations Department with the installation of some Optical Marks Readers (OMR) machines.

Inspecting the commencement of the marking of the just conducted Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) with the use of the OMR machines in Asaba, Delta State Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Mr. Patrick Ukah, said that the initiative was aimed at reducing human errors and the amount of time in marking of examination scripts.

Mr. Ukah noted that with the increase in the population of students in the state, there was need to devise modern means of carrying out marking of the Basic Education Certificate Examination and the Cognitive Placement Examination as well as promotional examination.

The Basic and Secondary Education Commissioner, who underscored the importance of the Examinations Department of his ministry, said that a solar system to boost power supply have installed in the department, adding that in no distant time from now, the ministry would commission an Educational Management Information System that would help in the gathering and documentation of data.

He said that he was satisfied with the effectiveness of the OMR machines and gave the assurance that the state would sustain the initiative.

Earlier, the System Analyst, PN Systems Limited, Mr. Uzoma Nwosu, informed the Education Commissioner that each OMR machine has the capacity to scan 12,000 A5 papers per hour, adding that it could also scan 8,000 A4 papers in one hour.

He said that in a perfect situation, the three OMR machines would be able to scan and mark the 214,000 sheets of the recently conducted BECE in the 25 Local Government Areas of the state in a maximum of 6 hours.

In her remarks, the Director of Examinations, Kehinde Oderowho, commended the State Governor, Senator (Dr.) Ifeanyi Okowa, and the Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education for the initiative, saying that it had made their work much easier and error free.