Africa-Press – Uganda. The Uganda National Examinations Board executive secretary, Dan Odongo, has assured parents and the public that even amidst the COVID-19 spike in infections, he is hopeful national examinations will be done.
While attending the education sector review, Odongo said that the plans for the national examinations early next year “are still on schedule”.
Candidates started registering for UNEB on October 22 and the process ended on November 30, according to the final calendar, released by the First Lady and Education minister Mrs. Janet Museveni at the beginning of October this year. The Calendar shows that the briefing of Senior Four candidates will be on February 26, and the Uganda Certificate of Education examinations will start on March 1- April 6, 2021.
The briefing of candidates in Primary Seven will be on March 26 and they will later sit for their examinations on March 30-31, 2021.
The briefing for Senior Six candidates will follow on April 9 and they will sit for examinations from April 12 to May 3.
The state minister for higher education, Dr. John Chrysostom Muyingo, thanked parents for having paid attention to registration.
“This is a positive step forward in ensuring that we can normalise the learning and assessment process in the country’s education sector amidst the COVID-19 era.”
Odongo noted that the number of students had slightly increased from the earlier figure of 1,180,998, to 1,181,666 candidates; who have been registered at all the Primary Seven, Senior Four, and Senior Six levels.
This is a higher number, compared to the 1,138,000 students who registered for the final examination in 2019. Even with the disruption of the academic year by the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of candidates has gone up.
Of the registered candidates, 749,518 are Primary Leaving Examinations. There are more 333,231 students for the Uganda Certificate of Education and 98,249 students registered for the Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education.
Amidst the COVID-19 era, there was fear that few students would manage to register for national examinations.
According to Odongo, this has certainly been a successful exercise. “He says the PLE registered candidates for instance have exceeded the projected number of 720,000 candidates.”
The high number of students who have registered, Odongo said, is a mark of achievement, especially after the schools had closed for six months.
When President Yoweri Museveni ordered the immediate closure of all schools and educational institutions to curb the spread of COVID-19, an estimated 15 million learners in 73,240 institutions and 548,192 teachers were affected.
Breakdown of registered candidates
He explained that out of the registered PLE candidates, 53 % are females, while 50.3% of the UCE candidates are females. At UACE level, 42% of the registered candidates are females.
Odongo said that UNEB validated and accredited a total of 457 new examination centres. These include 100 centres for both UCE and UACE candidates and 357 for PLE. This brings the total of our examination centres to 19,812. Out of these, 13,971 are PLE Centres, 3,662 are UCE while the UACE Centres are 2,179.
