Does JAMB Use Negative Marking in UTME?
schoolnews JAMB

For so many years, even during my time, there have been rumours that JAMB uses negative marking in its exams. Negative marking here means subtracting marks for any question a candidate gets wrong. For this reason, many candidates for fear of being incorrect deliberately leave any question they are not sure of the correct answer unanswered.


This rumour has been believed for so many years but is it actually true? A JAMB official spoke concerning this some time ago.


According to him, negative marking in the JAMB exam DOES NOT EXIST. There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like Negative marking.

He explained that JAMB is NOT a certificate examination, so they do not give candidates RAW SCORE. JAMB does what they call score standardization/normalization. It is based on the number of candidates that sat for a particular subject as well as the mean deviation of candidates that sat for that subject.

This is finally passed through a graph so selection will not be difficult. The graph must not be too to the left or right if it happens that its too to the left or right, JAMB adjusts the graph to their own scale.

A candidate may get 80/100 as RAW score but when the score is standardized, it ends up being like 60-75, depending on the values involved. JAMB uses a certain formula to translate the RAW score of candidates to a STANDARDIZED SCORE.

Since this has proved that there is nothing like negative marking, candidates are advised to answer all questions in the exam. First, answer the questions you are very sure of and come back later to answer the rest.


Yeah, about “Guessing”, you should try to guess with logic and elimination, just like how it’s done in “Who wants to be a millionaire”. You might just be lucky to get all the ones you guessed right.


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