MAJOR SYSTEMIC SHIFT: JAMB Formally Scraps Degree Programmes in Colleges of Education, Restores NCE as Sole Entry Route for 2026/2027 Session

ABUJA, NIGERIA — The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has announced a monumental structural reform that completely reshapes the landscape of tertiary admissions and teacher education in Nigeria. In an official guidelines document issued from the Office of the Registrar under Prof. Is-haq O. Oloyede in June 2026, the board declared an immediate end to the operation of bachelor's degree programmes affiliated with universities within Colleges of Education.

​This sweeping directive marks a total institutional reversal intended to enforce specialized regulatory mandates and sanitize the entry streams into the nation's teacher training institutions.

​Key Directives From the New Admission Framework

​As explicitly outlined in the regulatory text, the new operational framework leaves no room for ambiguity regarding the status of degree seekers within these campuses:

​Complete Ban on Undergraduates: With effect from the 2026/2027 academic session, no admission into 100 or 200 Level degree streams is permitted within any College of Education.

​Termination of Affiliations: All affiliated undergraduate degree programmes previously run by various universities in partnership with Colleges of Education are completely terminated from the 2026/2027 session onward.

​Exclusive NCE Focus: The board has mandated that all future entrants into these colleges must pass strictly through the standard Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) route.

​Strict Mode of Entry and Choice Enforcement

​To prevent candidates from manipulating the Central Admissions Processing System (CAPS), JAMB has introduced tough biometric and cross-validation restrictions. Any choice of the NCE pathway is treated as a deliberate, absolute commitment.

​Once a candidate accepts an NCE recommendation or proposal, any ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) or Direct Entry (DE) process tied to standard university degrees will be automatically suspended by the system. Furthermore, candidates migrating from NCE tracks back to the UTME pool must explicitly disclose all past and pending applications, ensuring they are only processed for one single mode of entry at a time.

​O-Level Verification, Biometrics, and Fees

​According to the administrative flow charts illustrated in the official policy guidelines, the registration process requires deep integration with national examination bodies like WAEC, NECO, NABTEB, and NBAIS:

​Verification Costs: Candidates must generate a verification code from their respective examination bodies, paying ₦1,500 for a single O-level sitting and ₦2,000 for two sittings.

​Registration Expenses: The baseline application registration fee is pegged at ₦3,500, with an additional ₦700 service charge for accredited CBT center operations.

​Biometric Sanity: All registrations must capture physical fingerprints and live passport photographs at an Institutional Professional Registration Centre (IPRC) before data is securely transmitted to the candidate's college of first choice.

​Condonement of Past Irregularities and Automatic Migration

​For students caught in administrative limbo due to previous admissions anomalies, the board has provided a strict window for regularization. Candidates who were previously admitted into Colleges of Education without formal JAMB UTME registration during the 2024/2025 and 2025/2026 academic sessions are being granted a final condonement opportunity upon the payment of ₦4,200 in total regularisation fees, provided they upload verified O-level results.

​Crucially, the guidelines confirm that all candidates who had already applied through the 2026 UTME mode for non-technology, agriculture-related National Diploma (ND) and NCE options are being automatically migrated by JAMB's system to their chosen first-choice institutions for proper placement and subsequent institutional recommendation.

​Restoring the Dignity of Teacher Education

​Educational analysts have widely lauded this hardline policy decision by the Prof. Is-haq O. Oloyede-led registrar's office. For over a decade, many Colleges of Education across Nigeria abandoned their foundational mandate of producing highly qualitative, specialized primary and lower-secondary school educators, focusing instead on running parallel university degree programs to boost internal revenue. By purging degree-seeking students from these campuses and restoring the NCE as the exclusive entry pathway, JAMB is effectively forcing these institutions to rebuild Nigeria's crumbling foundational teaching tier from the ground up.