Joyce Namugambe
The two days of conducting Primary Leaving Examinations PLE in the country ended successfully yesterday, Thursday 09th November 2023 after the candidates wrote their English paper in the afternoon.
UNEB reports that it has had a smooth exercise in most parts of the country without any major challenges. According to UNEB, in places where the weather was bad, the board worked with the district authorities to facilitate alternative and shorter distance distribution routes and sometimes authorised new venues to act as sitting centres to mitigate the effects of rain. This ensured that all centres received their examination papers in good time.
UNEB has confirmed to the public that there was no leakage of any of the PLE examination papers. No candidates therefore acquired prior knowledge of any examination paper before the official time of the start of the examination.
The board is greateful to members of the public who acted as whistle blowers and diligently reported intended cases of malpractices which were quickly intercepted by both UNEB security team and police. UNEB also got to know about a number of attempts by school headteachers and Directors to bribe UNEB scouts and invigilators for purposes of permitting external assistance to the candidates.
Many of the UNEB personnel refused the bribes and consequently guarded against the external assistance to their examination centres, thus upholding the value of integrity and security of examinations.
In such cases, one in Kyebando, police arrested the Director and Headteacher of His Grace Primary School Baka David together with the chief invigilator Gerald Kakuru and the scout Brian Lwanga, for trio cutting the envelope containing science examination papers that had been delivered at around 8:00am for that particular examination centre.
It is alleged that the Director/ Headteacher of this school bribed invigilators and a scout who were compromised and accepted to cut the examination envelop. It appears that the intention was to share online and offer external assistance to the candidates. UNEB security team and police was tipped and arrived at the scene before any photographs of the papers were taken.
Similar cases occurred in Nabweru, at Lyn Primary school, and in Kajjansi at a school in Lubowa, and another case in Fortportal and Kabarole.
However, today on Friday 10/11/2023, UACE officially begins with the briefing of candidates on the guidelines and regulations for the conduct of the examinations. In this case, 110, 563 candidates registered for this year’s exams and will sit in 2,283 centres around the country. UNEB urges headteachers to seriously consider the briefing exercise and endeavour to personally brief the candidates.
