KAMPALA — The Uganda National Examinations Board has identified a significant decline in several humanities and creative arts subjects in the 2025 Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education results, even as overall science performance improved.
While the national certificate qualification rate remains high at 98.9 percent, the board highlighted specific disciplines where candidates struggled to maintain previous standards.
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The decline in humanities and arts
The 2025 data reveals that the most notable drops in performance occurred in Entrepreneurship Education, Christian Religious Education, Fine Art, and Physics.
In Entrepreneurship Education, the percentage of candidates earning an A grade fell to 1.5 percent from 3.6 percent in 2024. Christian Religious Education saw a similar dip, with top-tier passes decreasing from 6.3 percent to 4.3 percent. Fine Art also recorded a decline, with A grades dropping to 2.9 percent from 4.4 percent the previous year.
Physics emerged as the only core science subject to see a performance decrease, with A grades falling from 6.6 percent in 2024 to 3.5 percent. Additionally, Subsidiary Mathematics continues to be a major hurdle for students, with examiners reporting a high failure rate in the subject.
Identifying the “application gap”
UNEB Executive Director Dan Odongo noted that the primary challenge across these subjects is a failure by learners to relate classroom knowledge to real-life situations.
Examiners reported several systemic issues:
- In Christian Religious Education, candidates struggled with application-based tasks that required connecting holy texts to everyday life.
- In Geography, students demonstrated poor data analysis skills and an inability to relate fieldwork findings to the physical environment.
- Science candidates, particularly in Physics, were hampered by inadequate practical exposure, leading to errors in experimental procedures and data interpretation.
- In History, scripts often lacked the necessary analytical skills and logical flow required for high-level marks.
Communication and language barriers
The board also flagged concerns regarding local language examinations, noting that many candidates are not sufficiently grounded in grammar or the ability to translate passages into English coherently.
Despite these subject-specific declines, the 2025 cycle saw a 17.2 percent increase in total candidates, with 113,291 students ultimately qualifying for university degree programs. The board is now calling for a shift in instructional focus to address the widening gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application.
