Some of the schools whose results from last year’s Uganda Advanced Certificate of Educations examinations have been withheld owe the examination body money.
According to Uganda National Examination Board-UNEB, the affected schools have arrears for registration and protest fees, which are paid to allow candidates to seat exams for which they didn’t register. A candidate is required to pay Shillings 100,000 for each paper.
Although UNEB declined to name the affected school, the UNEB spokesperson, Jennifer Kalule Musamba told Uganda Radio Network that some of the schools owe them money for as many as five years. “They have been signing agreements promising to pay the money but they never fulfill the agreements,” Musamba said.
She explains that candidates from the affected were allowed to sit examinations and even get results in the past after signing agreements with the examinations body promising to clear later on.
“It’s UNEB’s policy not to release results to schools until all arrears have been cleared but in the past we have been sympathetic and released these examinations but schools never come back to clear. So this time round we decided to withhold their results,” she said.
While other candidates are able to access their results from the UNEB online portal or SMS messaging, those from the affected can only access them from UNEB offices in Ntinda. The school heads are expected to clear with the UNEB accounts office before they can access the results.
According to local news agency, URN that visited UNEB offices on Thursday afternoon, school heads were found outside the accounts office struggling to access hard copies of the results. Joseph Nganda, the Director of Studies Lukalu Secondary School in Butambala district, said that even after paying the required fees on Wednesday, he was yet to access the results.
Simon Muhangi from Kabale district says he hopes to be able to access the examination results because the number of phone calls that he is getting from parents are about to give him heart attack.
“I owed UNEB Shillings 500,000 that I paid this morning but I have not yet received the results. I hope that I can get them because many parents are calling me asking me whether the results were withheld due to examination malpractice,” Muhangi said.
According to Musamba, withholding results is the only method that UNEB can now use to get schools to arrears.
This is not the first time that UNEB has withheld results due to fees arrears. In 2018, the examination body collaborated with schools and withheld results of candidates that had not completed tuition fees.
Similarly, the affected candidates couldn’t access their results using the SMS option provided by the examination body.
URN
