By Agencies
KAMPALA
The first results of the new Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) under the new curriculum released in Kampala Tuesday left 98% of the candidates passed.
The overall results showed 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 was no ranking of candidates into Divisions as in the previous curriculum. A candidate would qualify for the UCE Certificate if he/she obtained a competency level grade of D in at least one subject sat for.
Examinations body UNEB said that “There has was a very welcome reduction in cases of malpractice. There were 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 did not lend themselves to malpractice. However, the cases reported were mostly in the science practical papers, with Physics being most affected. Of the cases, 883 (93.1%) were 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.”
According to the Independent online publications,
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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