The Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) is investigating cases in which some schools fraudulently registered perfectly normal pupils as special needs candidates for the 2024 Primary Leaving Examination (PLE). While speaking to journalists shortly after the release of the PLE results yesterday in Kampala, the Uneb chairperson, Prof Celestino Obua, said one case has been confirmed and more are still under investigation.
“We have been dealing with one case that has been confirmed, but we have leads, it’s not the only one but when some of this information is properly gathered and prepared, we will be able to inform the press,” Prof Obua said. He described it as a unique case of examination malpractice, which the board is encountering for the first time, categorizing it as fraud.
“Because the disabilities are clear if the pupil is blind, deaf, it’s clear. But under the others category, it is easy for some of these teachers with the aid of parents and doctors to commit this fraud because how will you prove that a child has asthma or not,” he said.
The Uneb chairperson said their legal team will develop a process to verify whether a child registered under the “others” category genuinely has a condition that qualifies for consideration under special needs. “As a board, we will also need to come up together with our legal team on what measures we are going to take.
The law provides that fraud is a criminal offence, and so as such, we will need to include that among the activities that are considered under the examination malpractice,” Prof Obua said. The Uneb executive secretary, Mr Daniel Odongo, explained that the errant schools are using this to help their top students benefit from the extra time (45 minutes) given to special needs category.
“They are hiding under the category of “others”. Pupils who suffer from health conditions such as Asthma, Epilepsy and Sickle Cell anaemia the Board recognises that such candidates may get attacks during the examination period. However, those candidates do not require any specialised assistance, except extra time of 45 minutes allowed to them,” Mr Odong said.
Last year, the Board registered 3,328 special needs learners of various categories, including the blind, deaf, physically handicapped and dyslexics, compared to 2,652 in 2023. The board attributed the annual increase to the growing awareness created in schools by Uneb and the Ministry of Education and Sports. In an interview yesterday, the chief executive officer of the National Union of Disabled Persons in Uganda, Ms Esther Kyozira, described it as an unfortunate vice aimed at exploiting children with special needs. “This habit is illegal and they are exploiting the disability because no one just wakes up and says I want to be disabled. So, if a school can even identify able-bodied children and call them disabled, I think that is not proper,” Ms Kyozira said.
She further advised the board to always do thorough assessments during registration. Similar cases have been registered by the Electoral Commission. The national coordinator for Persons with Disability (PWDs), Mr Musa Musinguzi, revealed that during the election period, several able-bodied Ugandans fake disabilities to vie for PWD seats. However, the EC Commissioner, Dr Ssali Simba Kayunga, said those faking disabilities will be rejected in the 2026 polls.
SPECIAL NEEDS LEARNERS’ PERFORMANCE
Meanwhile, Uneb revealed that there has been a great improvement in the performance of learners with special needs compared to last year, as the majority of candidates obtained Division Two (51.5 percent) which is above the national mean of 50.5 percent. Out of 3,328 registered learners, 181 candidates obtained Division One, 713 Division Two, 627 Division Three, and 371 Division Four while 388 were ungraded and 48 did not do the examination. Of the 181 who obtained Division One, three are blind, 64 have low vision, three are deaf, four are physically handicapped, 51 are Dyslexic, and 56 have other underlying conditions.
