Dan Odongo
Dan N. Odongo, the UNEB Executive Director
Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) has revealed that the overall results show that 350,146 (98.05%) of the candidates who sat for Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) in 2024 qualified for the UCE certificate.
Under the competency-based assessment, there is no ranking of candidates into Divisions as in the previous curriculum. A candidate qualifies for the UCE Certificate if he/she obtains a competency level grade of D in at least one subject sat for.
Dan N. Odongo, the UNEB Executive Director, says this will be indicated on the Transcript and Certificate as Result 1. The candidates who did not fulfil the conditions for the award of the UCE certificate will have Result 2 indicated on their transcripts. These are candidates who did not sit for some compulsory subjects, or did not sit for a minimum of eight subjects, or who have no Project Work scores. Result 3 will be will be indicated on the transcript of a candidate who has not met the minimum level in all the subjects; i.e. the candidate will have only achievement level E in all subjects taken.
“Candidates with Result 2 and 3 respectively shown on their Transcripts do not qualify for a UCE certificate,” Odongo said during the release of 2024 UCE results at State House Nakasero on Tuesday.
Achievement Levels and their Descriptors
According to UNEB, Grade A means Exceptional and demonstrates an extraordinary level of competency by applying innovatively and creatively the acquired knowledge and skills in real life situations, while Grade B means Outstanding and demonstrates a high level of competency by applying the acquired knowledge and skills in real life situations.
Grade C means Satisfactory and demonstrates an adequate level of competency by applying the acquired knowledge and skills in real life
situations.
Grade D means Basic and demonstrates a minimum level of competency in
applying the acquired knowledge and skills in real life situations, while Grade E means Elementary and demonstrates below the basic level of competency in applying the acquired knowledge and skills in real life situations.
According to UNEB, a total of 359,417 candidates were registered as the first cohort for the competency-based examination. Of these 177,133 (49.3%) were males, while 182,284 (50.7%) were females. 136,785 (38.1%) were beneficiaries of the USE programme and 222,632 (61.9%) were Non-USE. A total of 357,120 (99.4%) candidates were present for the examination. Only 2,297 (0.6%) were absent.
“The rate of absenteeism continues to drop and this is a good sign,” Odongo said.
He added that given the complete departure from the old grading system reporting of Grade/Division 1, 2, etc; no comparison can be made between results of 2023 and 2024.
“Exceptional levels of achievements are noted especially in Art and Design, History & Political Education, Agriculture and Mathematics. Proportions of candidates achieving at the elementary level (below basic level) are most significant in Physics followed by Chemistry and then English Language. The reports from our Scorers (examiners) indicate that in the Science practical assessments, candidates were expected to use a given scenario and materials provided to develop aims and a hypothesis, plan and carry out investigations and draw conclusions,” Odongo said, adding that the main problem observed is the failure of candidates to interpret the scenarios, or connect the scenarios and the materials supplied to real life situations, or interpret the results of the experiments carried out and create meaning connected to everyday situations.
He said Candidates that appear not to have been guided properly tried to use recall to respond to the scenarios.
“In English and other foreign languages, the challenges observed have been inadequate vocabulary; inability to paraphrase (use own words without copying directly from a given text) in summary writing; use of inappropriate examples in comprehension texts or literature analysis. In those languages where speaking was part of the assessment, candidates demonstrated a fair understanding of the given scenarios and responded fairly. The challenge that cuts across all areas is the difficulty candidates showed in linking scenarios to problem solving in real life situations. This competency is at the core of the curriculum and implies that teachers need to do much more to guide the learners towards this focus,” he said.
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