The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
THIS WEEK: Results for 4525 candidates withheld as UNEB releases UCE exams
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The 2017 Uganda Certificate of Education exams were released on Feb.07 at the Prime Minister’s office in Kampala. Speaking at the release, UNEB Executive Secretary Daniel Odongo said results of 4525 candidates were withheld because of suspected malpractice. He said 81 people suspected of involving in various examination malpractices were arrested whereby 49 have appeared in court and are currently on court bail with their cases at various stages of hearing. 21 suspects he said have jumped police bond and criminal summons have been issued against them while 11 are due in court as their files are still with the Director Public Prosecution for sanctioning.
“We were alerted by whistle blowers, scouts and invigilators and the single overwhelming form of malpractice experienced was assistance given by third parties”, he said.
Majority of malpractices were reported in science subjects with biology being most affected with 39.7% of the cases, followed by physics at 21%, chemistry 10.3% and mathematics at 6.7%. Scouts reported some instances in science practical papers where candidates did not carry out the experiments required in the examination but recorded in their scripts results provided from external sources.
Meanwhile 320119 candidates of the 326212 registered sat for the exams whereby females performed marginally better than males in English language whereas males performed better in all the other large entry subjects. In terms of divisional passes 11.4% of males passed with division 1 and 18.6% in division 2 whereas 8.4% of females attained division 1 and 15.4% division 2. This trend in the disparity between the performance of male and female candidates has been observed over the years.
