By Daudi Zirimala
The State Minister for Uganda Higher Education, John Chrysostom Muyingo is concerned about the reducing number of students finalizing the Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education UACE
Speaking during the release of 2018 Uganda Advanced Certificate of Examinations (UACE) results at President’s Office, Kampala, Muyingo said that its unfortunate that a number of students drop out after registering for UACE which has to be followed by stakeholders to find out the reasons why numbers keep on reducing every year.
According to UNEB a total of 99,672 students registered for 2018 UACE out of who 53,359 are males and 41,313 females across the 2,217 centres in Uganda.
UNEB executive secretary Dan Odongo said girls performed better, especially in arts subjects. However, Biology overall was the worst done subject.
Odongo, secretary says Girls constituted 41.4% of the candidates who sat for the exams.
"Whereas gender parity has been attained at UCE, at this level (UACE), the gap between males and females taking these exams is still wide with parity index of 0.7," he said.
According to him, 98.5% of 101,269 candidates qualified for the award of UACE, including candidates who obtained at least one subsidiary level pass in a subject at principal level.
Results of 79 candidates from 24 centres have been withheld over malpractice and were seeking for assistance during the examinations, among other reasons," she added.
History, Economics, Entrepreneurship Education, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Art subjects have shown better performance in 2018 than in 2017
41,296 female candidates were registered in 2018 as compared to 41,932 female candidates who were registered in 2017.
Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) chairperson, Prof Mary Okwakol says there is a possibility that female students took up vocational studies available to them in preference to the UACE level.
"We note improvements in Physics and biology at subject level but a drop of performance at principal level," she says.
Prof Okwakol says candidature has reduced by 2.9%.
"This trend has been observed since 2014. Entry figures continue to show that overwhelmingly number of candidates is opting for humanity subjects," she adds.
According to her, allowing malpractice in exams will lead to low quality of the country's human resource.