FULL BRIEFING: See How Candidates Performed in 2022 UCE — Plus Results of 1035 Candidates Withheld Over Cheating

An event for the release of the 2022 Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) examination results is underway at State House Nakasero in Kampala. Keep refreshing this page for updates.

Senior officials from the Ministry of Education and Sports, including Ministers, as well as Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) officials are present at the release of the results.

Uneb Chairperson Prof Mary Okwakol concerned that some school head teachers did not brief candidates, making some engage in examination irregularities and malpractice.

Okwakol also noted that the Ebola outbreak affected conducting of the examinations but the challenges were dealt with.

“Just like the PLE whose results we recently released, the UCE 2022 examination was also conducted under the threat of Ebola. This was even tougher since it was conducted for five weeks. This called for effort from UNEB to ensure that the guidelines put in place were observed,” said Prof Okwakol.

Cases of examination malpractice have drastically reduced compared to previous UCE examination, added Okwakol.

Uneb Executive Director and Secretary Dan Odongo says candidature increased by 16,063 (4.8%) from 333,396 in 2020 to 349,459, in 2022 reversing the decrease of 4,324 (-1.3%) that had been witnessed in the previous examination. The candidates sat from 3,703 centres. Of these, 114,181 (32.7%) were USE beneficiaries.

The number of male candidates registered is 175,768 (50.3%) and that of females is 173,691 (49.7%). The difference is 2,077 more males than females who registered for the examination. In 2019, the number of females had surpassed that of the males, for the first time, by 398.

The gap, in favour of males, appears to be resurfacing. In 2022, 345,695 candidates (173,761 males and 171,934 females) appeared for the examination compared to 330,592 candidates who appeared for the examination in 2020. his is an increase of 15,103 (4.6%) candidates.

• There is an improvement in performance in the large entry subjects except in Christian Religious Education, Biology and Commerce. Mathematics showed better performance at the Distinction level, but declined overall.
• English Language improved at credit and overall Pass levels but declined at the distinction level. Performance in Biology has continued to decline as seen in the last few years.
• Worth noting is that, performance in Physics and Chemistry has improved, although the overall pass levels are still low. Over 40% of the candidates have not passed the two subjects. The Board examined Chinese Language for the first time in 2022. A total of 134 candidates sat and 124 (92.5%) of them passed. The language is in addition to other major languages; French, German, Arabic, Latin and Kiswahili already are being examined.
• We note that this year, examiners reported better quality work in English Language. However, in composition writing, where candidates are expected to exhibit creativity and originality, learners in some schools are still cramming passages from textbooks what they call “model compositions” with unusual and difficult vocabulary. They then reproduce the crammed passages irrespective of what the composition topic is. This practice is, fortunately, declining, because candidates who do this are punished.
• In the Comprehension passage, candidates found difficulty in extracting appropriate information to use to corectly answer the questions based on the passage. There are also weaknesses in using the correct grammar in sentence construction.
• The essential skill of extracting main ideas from a passage and writing out a coherent summary presents a major challenge to most candidates.

CHEATING

A total of 1,035 results will be withheld in accordance with Section 5 (2) (b) of the UNEB Act No 1 of 2021. The number of resuits to be withheld has been reducing steadily at this level. Examination centres from which results are withheld will be notified through their portals.

You can see our extensive coverage of the previous UCE results in our latest story on this topic HERE.

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