COUNSELLING AS A STRONG TOOL FOR CHECKING EXAMINATION MALPRACTICE AND COPING WITH EXAMINATION ANXIETY

Background of the study: Evidence abound of increasing incidents of examination malpractices by students at schools and colleges; which conflict with the core purpose of education ´ the training of the mind and character for the acquisition of practical and theoretical skills, knowledge and functional ideas for development; and the search for truth and knowledge and the creation and communication of ideas. In Nigeria, the first publicly reported case of examination malpractice occurred in 1914 when there was a leakage of question papers in the senior Cambridge local Examination. Ever since, there have been cases of irregularities reported on a yearly basis. But, the outstanding years were 1963- 2003 (West African Examination Council, 2004). 

The major forms of examination malpractice reported are: Impersonation; bringing in foreign materials (books, calculator); substituting worked scripts, stealing, converting, misappropriating scripts; collusion in the examination hall (copying); mass organized cheating involving assistance from teachers and outsiders; and insult\assault on supervisors\invigilators (Oluyeba & Daramola, 1992). This trend in examination malpractices is inimical to academic development and advancement and needs to be drastically addressed. Examination malpractice is an illegal or unethical behaviour by somebody in the process of testing an examinee³s ability or knowledge by means of questions (Ikupa, 1997).

Oluyeba and Daramola (1992) remarked that examination malpractices include the following: examination malpractice is any irregular behaviour exhibited by a candidate or any-body charged with the conduct of examination before, during or after the examination. Test anxiety is a state of uneasiness, worry or feelings of uncertainty about an impending or on- going test or examination. It is a familiar  emotion which is caused by a perceived danger or threat to individuals. Thus, anxiety refers to a psychological and physiological state consists of emotional, somatic, cognitive and behavioural components. The two forms of anxiety are “State” and “Trait” anxiety. According to Ossai (2005) “State” anxiety manifest in form of tension, apprehension, nervousness and worry as well as other related physiological stimulation which emanate from the stimulation of the autonomic nervous system while trait anxiety is a relatively stable proneness to react to situations or impending events with high level of worry or apprehension.

Examination malpractice has crept into the fabrics of all levels of educational enterprise in Nigeria occasioned by laxity on the part of the students, poor supervision of examinations, poor educational background, societal stigmatization and fear of failure, poor study habit, lack concentration, disillusion and thereby involve themselves in examination malpractices. Therefore, examination malpractice is an act of wrongdoing that contravenes the rules of acceptable practice before, during and after examinations; it is practised by students in secondary and primary schools . Egbo (2013) studied various counselling strategies and recommended the implementation of several social, educational and teacher sensitization strategies. He stated that to avoid a  disaster  of  examination   malpractices,   there  is need for counsellors who have the professional training with students to get the best out of them.

Test anxiety is an educational problem that is commonly experienced by all students. Practically, students will feel some level of stress when they take a test, but for some students, the level of anxiety increases drastically and affects their performance . Moreover, test anxiety has shown a negative relationship with test performance, and their performance is about 12% less than non-anxious students. Some researchers considered the effects of problem-solving technique on test anxiety and academic performance and found that significant difference in the test anxiety levels between groups. Recent studies on examination malpractice and test anxiety have reported various implications which cheapens scholarship, impedes the intellectual progress of the nation, affects national growth, facilitates the enthronement of a mediocre, half-baked, incompetent and corrupt workforce.

1. 1. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

In recent time more than any other time in the history of this country, the prevalence of examination malpractices have assumed an alarming trend. The situation is so ugly that hardly you read newspapers, attend conference or go on internet without coming across issues rose on examination malpractices. The situation has also become so bad that our national and local mass media indirectly support and encourages examination malpractices by allowing people to advertise the phenomenon on the pages of their papers or radio and television .

The advertisement is in the form of school (mostly private) inviting students to come, write examination in their schools, and pass in one sitting. The question commonly asked here is how does one pass an examination by just registering and writing exams in the school? The possibility of such candidate or all those registered with the school, passing at a single sitting as advertise, is not that the entire students were so intelligent nor is it through training and hard work but the truth is through cheating. An investigation by THIS DAY revealed that certain secondary schools in Kaduna have become centre of excellence, where one can register for WAEC, NECO, or SSCE and determine the number of credits one wants, with full assurance that this will happen at the end of the day (Reuben, 2008). The truth is that so many schools in different part of the country are involved in this act. Hence such schools charged exorbitantly, tagged as ‘cooperation fees’ or ‘settlement fees’ in order to have surplus fund that will meet up the expenses of bribing external examiners or invigilators, as claimed by such school proprietors. According to Reuben (2008) that with the payment of stipulated amount, once question paper comes to such schools, it is solved by the teachers, quickly photocopied and distributed table by table to all the students that paid. In addition textbooks and any other relevant materials have free access into such exam hall.

Also it is in Nigeria that due to lawlessness, people go about freely discussing how they cheated or were helped to cheat in examination in their various centers. In some other examination centers answers are photocopied and given to students to copy free. The freedom has gone to the extent that some invigilators or their agents copy answers for candidate on the black board. Hence, you discover in recent time students with the support of their parents from public schools rush to such private schools to pay and register at the rate of twenty five thousand (N25, 000.00) to thirty thousand (N30, 000.00) instead of the official government rate of five thousand naira (N5, 000.00) to seven thousand Naira (N7, 000.00) charged by public schools (Reuben, 2008). These students also ignore the sponsorship offered to indigene students in public schools by most northern states government; simply because of their belief that such private centers provide automatic ticket for them to get the minimum of 5 credits and above including mathematic and English. Little wonder, therefore, that students with such a very good result find it extremely difficult to pass ordinary JAMB or post UME examinations in our various universities and polytechnics.

Similarly, examination malpractices increased tremendously in colleges of education. Most Academic Board of Colleges of Education receives cases of students’ involvement in different forms of examination malpractices almost after every semester. Such reports were presented to Academic Board through Examination Malpractices Committee (EMIC). In some colleges EMIC is centralized while in other colleges the committee is decentralized so that each school in the college has its EMIC which report to the Dean of the school who in turn report to the Academic Board for consideration and final approval.  It is then obvious that examination malpractices and its management is complex. It is indeed complex because it has to do with managing inappropriate behavior that involves many interested groups within and outside the College. More importantly collecting evidences or facts of such misbehavior is not an easy task as some candidates swallow cheat notes to escape prosecution. For instance a case was reported of an engineering student from Calabar polytechnic caught copying from a foolscaps almost chocked to death as he was swallowing it in an attempt to destroy  evidences (News watch, 1991). This is one out of so many episodes happening in Nigerian schools. Although some scholars have considered strategies like Self-Management Techniques, behavioural approaches incorporating systematic desensitization, relaxation training, biofeedback, modelling, anxiety reduction technique, anxiety management training and other behavioural techniques, more in-depth studies is still imperative. These concerns have raised the interest of teacher and professional counselors to fashion out ways to alleviating the problem among students. The objective of this study therefore is to evaluate various counseling strategies for checking examination malpractice and test anxiety among secondary school students in Nnewi education zone.