KAMPALA, Uganda — The Uganda National Examinations Board has flagged 63 cases of examination malpractice during the 2025 Uganda Certificate of Education exams, with the majority of incidents involving teachers providing answers during science practicals.
While the board reported record-breaking qualification rates for the second cohort of the Competency Based Curriculum, Executive Director Dan N. Odongo noted that the nature of the new assessment model makes traditional cheating difficult. However, investigators found overwhelming evidence in several centers that candidates were given experimental results by teachers to copy into their tables.
The reported cases were concentrated in mathematics and the practical papers for physics, chemistry and biology. According to UNEB, the malpractice was identified because the designs and investigations recorded by candidates did not relate to the results they submitted. Under the new curriculum, students are expected to use specific scenarios to design and carry out their own investigations.
Despite these cases, the 2025 examinations saw an overall surge in student achievement. A record 99.69% of the 429,949 candidates who sat for the exams qualified for the UCE certificate. Only 0.31% of students failed to qualify, a significant drop from the 1.9% failure rate recorded in 2024.
Total registration for the exams grew by 20.2%, reaching 432,163 candidates. Of these, 227,871 were female and 204,292 were male. While female candidates demonstrated higher achievement in English and Christian religious education, male candidates maintained a slight lead in exceptional levels for science and mathematics.
The competency-based model used for this cohort integrates school-based continuous assessment, worth 20%, with the final UNEB examination, which accounts for 80% of the total score. Odongo observed that while more students are reaching basic competency levels in sciences, many still struggle to connect laboratory scenarios to real-life problem solving.
The board also highlighted success among special groups, with 98.2% of special needs candidates and nearly all registered prison inmates at Luzira and Mbarara qualifying for certificates.
Results are now available digitally through school portals. Individual results can be accessed via mobile phone by typing UCE, leaving a space, entering the candidate’s full index number and sending the message to 6600 on the MTN and Airtel networks.
