Candidates sitting for this year’s West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) and National Examination Council (NECO) examinations would know when they would be writing the papers after the COVID-19 lockdown.

The Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba said this at the Presidential Taskforce on COVID-19 daily press briefing on Tuesday in Abuja.

“As you are aware, we have announced that WAEC and NECO for the year have been postponed. This postponement at the moment is indefinite”, he said.

The Minister, while noting that rendering public educational services is in the concurrent list, said the Federal Government will communicate a new resumption date to all stakeholders.

“As soon as we arrive at a definite time, we will recommunicate that. We will also be looking at what we will do in order for schools to reopen. As you will recall, we asked that schools vacate in the late part of March as soon as this broke”.

“Now it will be a coordinated effort among all the states because the lockdown in various parts will definitely affect how students go to school or not or how teachers come to school or not. So it goes with that saying that nobody can reopen schools now except we coordinate all of that effort,” he said.

Speaking further, he solicited the cooperation of parents regarding efforts put in place to render online services to students staying at home during the lockdown period.

He said that student had been advised to learn via online platforms, stating that the ministry was working with Universal Basic Education (UBEC) and the State Basic Education Board (SUBEB) to ease the process.

According to him, 15 states including Lagos and Anambra have already commenced learning through radio in accordance with approved standard, while also working with NTA and Radio Nigeria to provide educational contents.

“What they are running is an approved NERDC curriculum. That is ongoing at the moment, not all the states have started the programme but mostly Anambra, Lagos, a few states, about 14 of them.

The minister said that the biggest challenge were children with no access to the Internet, adding that the ministry was working to provide learning for those categories through terrestrial platforms.

He said some tertiary institutions had commenced online learning, adding that the public institution must leverage on such to engage the students, noting that support from stakeholders to achieve such had been tremendous.

“We are working with any stakeholders that can support our plans by providing platform for our students to learn,” he said.

He allayed fear over the closure of the National Open University (NOUN), adding that they would soon resume after the lockdown. (NAN)