UACE exams kickoff with no major hitches

UACE exams kickoff with no major hitches

KAMPALA. The Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education examinations, which began yesterday, got off to a flying start across the country. 

By press, no school had reported any ugly incidents as all the candidates arrived in their respective schools on time.
However, there was a slight delay of between 10 to 20 minutes in the distribution of examination materials in some schools in Kampala, which was partly attributed to the menacing traffic jams in the city .

Mr Boniface Sserunkuma, a chief invigilator at St Peters SS, Nsambya, said absence of a female on the invigilating team delayed the start of the first paper as they couldn’t check female candidates.

“The slight delay was caused by a combination of unforeseen problems like not having a woman on our team –something that forced us to look for one who was not a supervisor to help us check the female candidates,” he said

In Mbale district, at least five candidates missed the first exams after they were reported to be sick.

 Mr Bernard Nakisa, the chief invigilator at Mbale SS said the candidates’ students did not show up for examinations because they were reportedly very ill.

“The reports from school indicate that the students are ill and  that is why they have not shown up but they were registered to sit for the examinations, “said Mr Nakisa.

Uganda Examinations Board executive secretary Matthew Bukenya said no cases of malpractices were reported on Day one.

“ Even in Ntoroko District where we expected floods to disturb our people ,the situation has been okay at the two examination centres we  have ,” he said

He allayed fears of invigilators and supervisors about their delayed allowances, saying the process has been finalized and all be paid by Friday .

At Nkoma SS, the Chief Invigilator, Mr William Okotel said the examinations started well without any anomalies and students reported in time and none of them absconded.

In Jinja ,a  power outage at  Lords Meade Vocational College interfered  candidates who  where doing their  Biology Practical  Paper  ,forcing management  to use a generate to sufficient light in the laboratory .

Reports across the districts of Mbale, Sironko, Manafwa, Bududa, Bulambuli, Tororo, Bukedea, Soroti, Kumi and Soroti revealed there were no major disruptions.

Early last month the Ministry of Education in a circular warned all school heads not to refuse candidates from siting exams on account of nonpayment of school fees provided they registered for the examinations .

A total of 108,359 candidates are sitting for the exams at 1,803 centres, down from 115,780 who sat the exams last year.

Candidates are today (Tuesday) writing their History Paper One, Two, Three   and Mathematics paper One and Two.