🟥NEW CURRICULUM: 98% to get UCE certificates

Total Candidates: 359,417 (First cohort under new system)
✅ Gender Breakdown:
🔹 177,133 (49.3%) Male
🔹 182,284 (50.7%) Female

✅ USE vs Non-USE Candidates:
🔹 136,785 (38.1%) USE Beneficiaries
🔹 222,632 (61.9%) Non-USE

✅ Exam Attendance:
🔹 357,120 (99.4%) Sat for Exams

🔹 2,297 (0.6%) Absent (Absenteeism continues to decline )

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPNEDENT | The first results of the new Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) under the new curriculum have been released in Kampala today, indicating that 98% of the candidates have passed. The overall results show that 350,146 (98.05%) of the candidates who sat qualified for the UCE certificate.

A total of 359,417 candidates registered for the examination. Of these, 49. 3% were males and 50. 7% were females. 38. 1% were from the USE programme and 99. 4% attended the exam.

Under the competency-based assessment, there is no ranking of candidates into Divisions as in the previous curriculum. A candidate will qualify for the UCE Certificate if he/she obtains a competency level grade of D in at least one subject sat for.

Examinations body UNEB said that “There has been a very welcome reduction in cases of malpractice. There are 64 cases with a total of 984 candidates suspected, compared to nearly 3,000 suspected last year. The nature of the items in the papers do not lend themselves to malpractice. However, the cases reported are mostly in the science practical papers, with Physics being most affected. Of the cases, 883 (93.1%) are in the Sciences, and only 65 (6.9%) in the rest of the other subjects.”

“In these Science cases, there is overwhelming evidence that the candidates were given experimental results by teachers merely to copy. The work done by the candidates do not relate to results recorded.”

Pictorial release of #UCE2024 pic.twitter.com/WlFoGJBuOm

— Uganda National Examinations Board (@UNEB_UG) February 11, 2025

UNEB’s Executive Director Dan Odongo explained that, the new curriculum, being skills-based, requires that science labs and workshops are well-equipped to give the learners enough chance to create new knowledge through self-learning.

“Unfortunately, many rural and private schools lack these and are also short of science teachers. Along the way, we also discovered that some schools appeared to be resisting the change to the new curriculum. They were stuck to teaching the old curriculum with the hope that Government would retract the new curriculum, given the challenges that were evident at the start of the implementation of the curriculum. They were surprised when the Board released the sample examination papers. These challenges impacted greatly the candidates’ achievement in Sciences. Despite these challenges, the new competency-based curriculum assessment has been successful.”

The initial term for senior Five will commence on March 3, 2025. The selection process is scheduled for February 20 and 21, 2025. 

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New grading

UNEB Board chairperson Prof Celestino Obua explained earlier that the reporting of the achievement levels has changed from the stanine system of 1 to 9 (Distinctions, Credits, Pass and Fail) used in the previous content-based curriculum to letter grades, A, B, C, D and E.

” The Transcript (used to be Result Slip) and certificate will also change in content presentation. In arriving at the decision to adopt the letter grades format, the Board considered several options with various amounts of content. The Board’s decision was guided by the following considerations: (i) the report/transcript/certificate issued must be simple for all stakeholders to easily understand. (ii) the descriptors – explanations of the meaning of the grades – should be positive on what the holder of the certificate can do. “

UCE Results
Definition of terms

A– Exceptional
B– Outstanting
C -Satisfactory
D -Basic
E– Elementary

Result 1 in the transcript means qualify for certificate, at least one D in the gradable subjects.

Result 2 in the transcript doesn’t qualify for the award of certificate for some reason.

Result 3 those who did not meet minimum level in all subjects eg those with only E in all subjects.

Result 4 for those who missed exams.

A is equivalent to D1, D2

B is equivalent to C3, C4

C is equivalent to C5,C6

D is equivalent to P7,P8

E is equivalent to F9

Thanks for understanding, please explain to those parents.