Incidence of Examination Missing Scores in Universities in Benue State, Nigeria: Implications for School Administration

The purpose of this paper is to examine the incidence of examination missing scores in universities in Benue State: Implications for school administrators. The design of this study was survey research design. The sample for the study consisted of 360 students and 140 lecturers randomly selected from three universities in Benue State using simple random sampling technique. The instrument for data collection was structured questionnaire developed by the researcher and anchored on a continuum of strongly agree to strongly disagree. To carry out the study three research questions were answered using mean and standard deviation while three hypotheses were tested using t-test statistic. The result revealed that there was no significant difference in the opinions of students and lecturers on the causes, consequences and remedies to the incidence of missing scores in universities. The result indicated that the incidence of missing scores in universities could arise when students do not follow instructions to indicate their individual information correctly and also due to careless attitude of lecturers during marking and scoring of scripts among other factors. The paper indicates that one of the consequences of missing scores is that many brilliant students could be denied of good grades and better class of degrees on graduation with many other harmful effects on students. To forestall the incidence of missing scores in universities, the paper recommends that school administrators should remind the examiners to always ensure that the number of scripts they collect tallies with the number of candidates present in the examination hall and that lecturers should equally avoid marking of scripts in public places. More so, there should be good storage of examination scripts by University administration.