The overall best candidate in the 2019 Unified Tertiary Matriculations Examination, UTME, Ekene Franklin has won the 2019 outstanding gifted child in American Mathematics Competitions, AMC.
Speaking during his recognition in Ogun State alongside other students by International Academy for the Gifted LTD, IA GIFTED, Franklin said that he was not surprised with his outstanding performance even as he expressed concern over Nigeria’s school curriculum.
“I feel great to be honoured and despite my good performance, I still consider it as a challenge when compared with some of the students that took part in the exam from China and USA.
I would have love to be better prepared before I sat for the exam, because majority of the questions I answered were not in line with normal mathematics in my school.
“The curriculum for AMC exam is different from what we are exposed to in school and of more high standard, but I took part in the exam because I love mathematics.”
In his words, the Principal Consultant for IA GIFTED, Professor Adewale Solarin said for those who think Franklin performance in UTME was because the exam is multiple chioce, AMC has once again confirmed his ability.
He explained that the idea behind the exam was to prepare Nigeria students to compete favorably with their peers all over the world.
“We have been coordinating AMC exams for nearly a decade now while Kangaroo Sans Frontiers joined three years ago. The exam is for all students in private and public from primary to secondary. “Interestingly, this is not conventional exam we give to our students in school.
We go extra mile to make it a duty that our student’s should be able to compete favorably with other students all over the world. The idea is to challenge the student’s intellect and give them world view.
“We are very happy with the turn out this year. The performance for last year wasn’t as good as this year. We have a lot of medals won by Nigeria students this year.
Last year we had about 2,000 students that participated in the exam across the country but this year more than 4,000 participated.