The minister of education and sports, Janet Kataaha Museveni on Thursday 31st January 31, 2019 released the 2018 Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) results.
The chairperson Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) Prof Mary Okwakol said that only one standardized marking scheme is used by all examiners in a particular subject. The board also adopted a conveyor belt marking system, where a candidate script is marked by a group of examiners.
She however, rubbished allegations that Kampala schools were under marked saying that UNEB does not use a grading system that takes advantage of any category of schools in any part of the country.
“UNEB Board has anonymised schools using codes that even examiners do so without knowing the school. The names are only revealed at result printing,” she said.
Read all about the just released UCE results;
Exam results withheld reduced from 4525 in 2017 to 1825 in 2018. Of the 2017 withheld results, 1977 were cleared and released.
There is an overall improvement in English language, Islamic religious Education and Physics. Maths and Biology have also shown improvement at the distinction level
Gender parity was nearly reached with males at 50.4% and females at 49.6%.
Candidature levels improved from 0.9% in 2017 to 3.3% in 2018.
Girls performed better than boys in English and boys performed better in all other subjects. English and physics performance improved.
30721 candidates appeared for exams a 3.2% increase and there was decrease in absentee candidates.
288,387 students passed, a rise from 287,350 in 2017.
Prof Mary Okwakol said students did a lot of cramming instead of focusing on what they were taught, adding that the skills of speech writing proved difficult for the majority of the candidates.
“Many candidates presented crammed passages where they were required to use original composition. Skills of speech writing proved difficult for majority of candidates,” she said.
“Teachers have also trained students to cram hard inappropriate vocabulary. In many schools practicals are not done by candidates until the final exam,” she added.
She also said that 90% of the withheld results are from the science field especially practicals.
