A TOTAL OF 326, 149 STUDENTS ARE STARTING THEIR UCE EXAMS TODAY WITH BRIEFING

By; Jjunju Francis

As the Uganda Examinations Board UNEB starts this year’s final examinations today, UNEB executive secretary, Daniel Nokrach Odongo reveals that beginning next year; they will start grading secondary schools according to the value added on the students.

Odongo, said the school effectiveness measure they have introduced will compare secondary schools to see how much progress students have made from the time they joined in Senior One to the time they leave at Senior Four and the performance of all candidates depending on each schools contribution.

For a school that admitted students in third or fourth grades after P7 and at the end of four years in secondary, if such a child gets a second grade, the school will definitely had added value to this student. UNEB will use a metric to track the scores at PLE, UCE and UACE to measure performance of individuals and schools.

Odongo made the announcement before the press ahead of UCE exams, which start today with the briefing. A total of 1,073,715 candidates have registered for this year’s PLE, UCE and Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) compared with last year’s 1,068,224 students.

At least 326, 149 Senior Four students will sit the month-long UCE examinations that will begin with Physics practicals and Art on Monday. The government programme, Universal Secondary Education (USE) has registered 151,894 candidates, representing 46.6 per cent of the students sitting UCE.