Joyce Namugambe
S. 4 Candidates around the country have today, Monday 16th 2023 started their Uganda Certificate of Education final exams 2023 with Geography paper one in the morning and Geography paper 2 in the afternoon. These exams have been sat by over 364,000 around 3800 centres.
Out of the 364,000 candidates, 118,000 candidates are government-funded under Universal Secondary Education (USE), while 245,000 are privately sponsored. After the UCE exams have kicked off, Primary candidates are to sit for their Primary leaving Exams and the S.6 candidates are sitting for their Uganda Advance certificate of Education in November this year.
According to the executive director of the Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB), Daniel Odongo, this year there are over 700 special needs education learners among the UCE candidates, and 59 candidates are inmates from Luzira prison.
Odongo says that the distribution of examination papers to all examination centres across the country commenced on Saturday, adding that all centres had papers by midnight. He says the examination centres are to start distributing examination papers to all schools 30 minutes before the exams begin at 9am every day.
“I and my team have been monitoring the station since Saturday and all seems okay. We have not received any bad reports from the field of maybe bad weather or bad roads. We had anticipated some hitches in Karamojo but we started distribution in that region earlier,” he said.
Meanwhile, Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) said that it has deployed 110,000 to manage the 2023 edition of Uganda Certificate Education examinations that commenced on 13th October with briefing of candidates and written exams Monday.
These include 100,000 invigilators, 1,000 supervisors and over 1,000 security officers to ensure the exams run smoothly without any hiccups.
As the UCE exams begin, many upcountry schools continue to grapple with various challenges including inadequate staffing, poor classroom structures, roads that makes timely delivery of examination materials hard. All these challenges make it hard for the schools to perform at the same level compared to the schools within urban settings that have all the amenities for the students to concentrate on their studies and excel at the highest level.
