UNEB executive director Dan Odongo
At least 88,269 (candidates who sat the 2023 Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) were ungraded, Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) has said.
These represent 10.4 percent of 749,347 candidates who sat the national exams last year, according to the board’s executive secretary, Dan Odongo.
“Division U (Ungraded) is awarded to candidates who have failed to reach the minimum level of performance that can be awarded at least a Division 4 They are not eligible for admission to the Senior 1 class. It should be noted that the number of candidates in Division U is quite high, at 88,269 (10.4%) and should raise concern so that they do not just add to the statistics of school drop-outs,” Mr Odongo said.
According to UNEB, a higher proportion of the 2023 candidates passed in Division 3 and above level.
“Overall, the performance of candidates is comparable to that of 2022,”Mr Odongo added.
The education minister, Janet Musevenil said she had instructed the Permanent Secretary of her Ministry to work out something to ensure that such pupils are allowed to repeat Primary Seven in public schools.
“From Executive Director’s report, I observe that a number of candidates did not qualify for the PLE certificates (Ungraded). The government is going to ensure that this trend is reversed. I have instructed the Permanent Secretary [of Education Ministry] to work out something to ensure that such pupils are allowed to repeat Primary Seven in public schools so that we can support them,” she said.
A total of 247,728 pupils, who sat the PLE exams between November 8 and 9 in 14,442 examination centres are from private schools while the rest are from Universal Primary Education (UPE) schools.
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