The minister of Education, Ms Janet Museveni revealed Friday that government has finalized plans to open 94 new secondary schools in sub-counties across the country.
While releasing the 2020 UCE exam results at State House, Nakasero on Friday, Ms Museveni said she was concerned that 4,324 fewer candidates registered for UCE in 2020 compared to 2019.
She said the technical team at Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) and the Ministry attributed the reduction largely to circumstances related to the Covid-19 pandemic thus the need for new secondary schools to try and cover the gap.
“The NRM government is taking great strides in bringing an affordable and accessible public Secondary School to each sub-county that has none. By God’s grace, once the lockdown measures have been eased, my Ministry shall be ready to commission at least 95 brand new fully government-owned and complete Secondary Schools,”Ms Museveni said.
According to the minister, each of the schools is already staffed with 31 teaching staff, including the head teacher.
“These new Secondary Schools: fondly referred to as Seed Schools, are non-boarding Schools with a capacity for 400 students for both boys and girls,” she added.
Meanwhile, the Uganda National Examination board said it had withheld 2020 Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) for 1,292 candidate over examination malpractice.
“A total of 1,292 results will be withheld in accordance with Section 5 (2) (b) of the UNEB Act No 1 of 2021. This number was 1,825 in 2019,” said Uneb executive secretary, Mr Dan Odongo before adding that the affected candidates will be given a fair hearing.
Mr Odongo who made the remarks while releasing results at State House Nakasero added that examination centres from which results are withheld will be notified through their portals.
“The measures put in resulted in a welcome reduction in the cases of malpractice. Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics have been most affected, with external assistance, collusion among candidates, and impersonation and script substitution as the common cases,” he added.
In 2020, 330,592 candidates (165,251 males and 165,341 females) appeared for the examination compared to 333,060 candidates who appeared for the examination in 2019.
This is a decrease of 2,468 (-0.7%) candidates.
“The number of females who sat was more than that of males by 90 candidates,” Mr Odongo added.