Students who fail or miss UCE in 2023 to face a tough predicament
By MICHAEL TUMWESGIGYE
The education stakeholders in Uganda deserve a credit for the implementation of the new lower Secondary School Curriculum. As the country enters its 3rd year of the new lower secondary curriculum implementation, it’s firmly believed that it’s because of resolute combined effort.
We all keep watching, how far the new curriculum becomes a way out to the challenges that had plagued our education sector and
national development. Since colonial times, Uganda’s Secondary School education had faced challenges and gaps: for
example, overloaded curriculum, lacking key features of the 21st century skills, failure to address the socioeconomic needs of the country, dwindling standards and poor quality, being too theoretical and use of teaching methodologies which didn’t allow active learning and attainment of skills that can be applied to solve modern-day problems. It’s from the above background that education stakeholders in Uganda deserve credit for the new curriculum. This is because it has generic 21st Century skills and desired society values that focuses on a
broader and more inclusive model; and indeed, has removed overloads and overlaps in line with the global trend.
However, it should be noted that gaps in curriculum development process will keep surfacing during implementation phase. For example, this year (2023), the old lower secondary curriculum is to be phased out entirely when S.4 students sit their Uganda Certificate of Education
(UCE). If a learner, currently studying in the old curriculum, falls sick or fails to raise school fees or if anything happens and he or she doesn’t complete senior four in 2023, what will happen? Regrettably, so far, there isn’t any concrete answer that is given by key stakeholders apart from repeating the entire secondary cycle starting from senior one.
There is no chance for a learner under the old lower secondary school curriculum to repeat S.4 in the new secondary school curriculum. This is because the new lower secondary curriculum has different teaching and learning methods besides the different assessment model from the one being phased out. In the new curriculum, for instance, a learner is assessed continuously right from S.1 at the end of every topic.
This assessment contributes 20 percent to the final assessment at the end of the Ordinary level cycle and no learner can be permitted to sit national final examinations by UNEB without marks from the continuous assessment.
This will imply that if the learner is allowed to repeat S.4, they will be assessed and graded based on the 80%, which puts a student at a risk of failing and it’s utterly unfairness to him/her.
The number of students who fail, miss or don’t register for UNEB due to different unavoidable circumstances is quite substantial. For example, statistics from the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) indicate that 2,804 of the 333,396 candidates who registered to sit for the Uganda
Certificate of Education (UCE) exams in 2020 did not sit for examinations. There is another group of learners who fail exams and they have an option to repeat senior four. A case in point is 18,415 candidates who sat the UCE exams in 2020 and failed (This is a total of 21219 students who deserve an opportunity to repeat S.4). This number does not include the students that are not captured by UNEB because they failed to
register for examinations and were advised by their schools to repeat S.4. Bearing in mind that these learners have a right to education, continuity and lifelong learning, how will they access the opportunity to repeat S.4 to sit UCE? Although the buy in and general acceptability of the new lower secondary school curriculum has progressed well, the issue of what should be done to students who will miss or fail UCE of 2023
remains one of the key curriculum transition questions.
Could it be that involving the key stakeholders like parents, teachers, MPs, political parties, religious leaders and students was not done well at development stage? This issue should not be played cool given the fact that it is a common phenomenon that many learners fail to sit examinations even after registering with the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) due to unavoidable circumstances. As we wait for a quick fix pronouncement from the government concerning the group of learners who will miss or fail UCE 2023, we need to explore the already
available education pathways for such a group.
The available options are limited to either joining senior one (this implies that a student begins secondary school education cycle afresh) or drops out of formal schooling to attend non-formal skills or joins a Vocational Training Institute (VTI) as a primary school leaver. However, what can be taken as a golden opportunity is if UNEB intervenes to prepare special examinations for such a particular cluster.
What is so far clear is that most if not all schools have ensured that all learners that completed S.3 in 2022 have been automatically promoted as the old lower secondary curriculum reaches what will be its last year of implementation. The issue of students who will fail or miss UCE in 2023 will not only be quite challenging for learners alone because of age, time and cost factors but also for the parents and guardians and will have an economic effect nationally
