In her remarks delivered by the State Minister for higher Education, the Minister of Education Janet Museveni said that absenteeism of teachers in schools lately continues to be the biggest challenge facing the education sector as it hinders children’s performance.
“The outlook of the results we are releasing today could have been much better if all our teachers were rendering the services expected of them within the approved and allocated time frame…several studies continue tubing our poor performance to this vice which is Absenteeism” the Minister highlighted.
The Minister also called upon Ministry officials and head teachers to carryout strict supervision of this culpable vice to ensure that learners get the education needed to move the country forward.
On Friday, the Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) released the results of the Advanced Certificate of Education learners that conducted their examinations between 21st November and 9th December 2022.
The First lady commended UNEB for completing the cycle of examinations for 2022 and the successful placement of students to Senior 1 and 5 and she urged students to also interest themselves in what is offered in technical and vocational centers to pursue diverse carrier paths.
The Minister also condemned acts of bullying in schools and she called upon school head teachers to take interest in this unacceptable behavior in students because schools must be safe places for learners. This followed reports of a student who lost a life in Kyamatte Secondary School due to this evil act.
In her remarks, Professor Mary Okwakol the chairperson UNEB noted that the performance of candidates at the upper level of candidates obtaining 3 Principal passes has improved lately though they continue to see fewer girls offering science combinations.
“As was the case in the 2020 examination, female candidates have proportionally performed better than the males at all levels and have shown a lower failure rate. Even at individual subject levels, they have shown better performance” Okwakol articulated.
Okwakol also hinted on the performance of Biology that has gone down despite showing improvement in 2020 and she highlighted that the board she heads is optimistic that the review of the curriculum by National Curriculum Development Center may resolve this problem.
Dan Nokrach Odongo the Executive Director of UNEB noted that an analysis of the overall candidates’ performance in the examination shows that a very high percentage of candidates qualified for the award of the UACE as it was in 2020.
“At the minimum of 2 Principal passes required for University admission, 67,815 candidates that constitute a percentage of (70.3) qualified compared to 69.8% in 2020 also in cases where 1 Principal and 2 subsidiary passes levels are considered for admission in other tertiary institutions, 89.3% of the candidates will qualify” Odongo explained.
The Executive Director expressed concern of the zero scores that were recorded in many papers explaining that one of the candidates decided to copy out questions several times in the papers while another wrote a short poem to the examiner that started with “I am the stone the builder refused…”. Odongo later underlined that this performance indicates an underlying problem.
At the national level, 41,974 candidates scored 3Passes, 25,841 candidates scored 2Passes, 18,382 scored 1Pass, 9,590 got subsidiaries, 770 candidates failed completely, 1,333 were absent at the time of the exams which totaled to 97,890 candidates that were registered in the year 2022.
