The Uganda National Examinations Board-UNEB has registered an increase in the number of students registering for science subjects and mathematics.
According to the statement of results released by UNEB on Friday, all science subjects saw an increase in candidates despite the fact that the general number of students who registered for the examination had reduced due to the effects of COVID-19 and other factors. For instance, the records show that entries for mathematics alone rose by 4,000 candidates, Physics rose by 2,203 entries while biology and chemistry also saw an increase of 562 and 577 respectively.
UNEB Executive Director Dan Odongo says that the development is a big milestone but more effort is needed at the lower level, to particularly improve the performance of learners at the senior four-level where nearly half of the learners have been failing to attain a minimum pass of eight in the last three years.
“If learners fail to pass science subjects at lower levels, they cannot take them on at upper levels. The problem of low numbers of students registering for these subjects must be addressed by improving performance at UCE,” he said.
However, he is concerned about the low number of female entries for science subjects which have remained very lower compared to their male counterparts. According to UNEB, only 26,7 percent of female candidates sat for mathematics, 6.9 percent for physics, 13.2 percent for chemistry and 12.3 percent for biology.
Last year, the Minister of Education and Sports, Janet Museveni, appealed to schools to relax the requirements for students who wish to study science subjects at A-Level as one way of increasing the number of students taking sciences.
Janet said that she had learnt that the low numbers of students taking sciences at A-Level could partly be attributed to the stringent selection criteria by schools that admit only students with distinction scores from O-Level. However, it’s not clear whether some schools have heeded the call.
John Chrysostom Muyingo, the State Minister in charge of Higher Education, says over the years there have been misconceptions on science subjects, some tagged to gender. Muyingo says that such issues coupled with schools, mostly private, failure to invest in science subjects have been denying many learners a chance to take on science subjects.
-URN
