By our senior reporter
The Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) has released the results of the 2020 Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) examinations at the State House, Friday afternoon.
According to the results, boys performed better than girls at all the higher grades from division one to division two.
The statement indicates that 14.3 percent of boys that sat the exams passed in division one, 22.9 percent passed in division two and 24.7 passed in division three.
Of the girls that sat for the exams, only 9.9 percent passed in division one, 19.4 percent in division two and 24.7 percent in division three.
The girls beat the boys in English language, with over 1.4 of them passing at distinction level while the males only had 1.3 percent.
The male candidates performed better in Mathematics and the Sciences. This trend in the disparity between the performance of male and female candidates has been observed over the years according to UNEB.
TOTAL CANDIDATURE
Candidature, according to UNEB, decreased by 4,324 (-1.3%) from 337,720 in 2019 to 333,396.
UNEB Director Dan Odongo said that of these, 148,128 (44.4%) were USE beneficiaries.
“The number of male candidates registered is 166,744 (50.01%) and that of females is 166,652 (49.99%). The difference is only 92 more males than females. In 2019, the number of females had surpassed that of the males by 398,” Odongo said.
In 2020, 330,592 candidates (165,251 males and 165,341 females) appeared for the examination compared to 333,060 candidates who appeared for the examination in 2019. This is a decrease of 2,468 (-0.7%) candidates.
Odongo revealed that more female students sat for the exams than the males by 90 candidates.
Odongo said that a total of 519 Special Needs Education (SNE) candidates sat the exams with 252 males while 267 were females.
“These consisted of the blind (29), those with low vision (104), the deaf (78), the dyslexics (43) and physically handicapped (76). There were 189 others with other forms of disability that only needed to be given extra time.”
Odongo said that UNEB made adequate arrangements for these candidates, which included modification of questions, provision of questions written in Braille form, providing support personnel for the handicapped and dyslexics, and sign language interpreters for the deaf.
“Candidates with low vision were given question papers with enlarged print to enable them read more easily. All SNE candidates were allowed extra 45 minutes in each paper.”
