Senior six candidates could not comprehend questions – UNEB

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Uganda National Examinations Board – UNEB has said many candidates who sat for the 2019 Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education examinations failed because they misunderstood questions

According to the examination body, while the performance of learners improved this year the work of candidates’ reports show that comprehension is a very big problem that follows learners right from Primary Leaving Examinations to the upper secondary UACE.

Dan Odongo, the executive secretary of the board says that candidates at A’level still face problems reading and understanding questions correctly. He says candidates failed to answer questions or present logical arguments were not responded to well. He says candidates wrote irrelevant answers to questions that were asked.

According to Odongo, some of the affected subjects were Christian Religious Education – CRE and Luganda. Candidates who sat for these two subjects showed the highest level of a lack of comprehension.

In other subjects like Luganda, questions that asked candidates to talk about traditional norms were misunderstood. Candidates failed to show that they understood different steps of traditional marital ritual.

The executive secretary attributes the failure of candidates to comprehend questions to poor teaching methods. He says candidates are taught to cram and not to understand. As such, when they see questions, they answer what they crammed.

Despite this, Odongo says that the board noted very good performance in the traditional government and some private schools.

A total of 103,429 candidates sat for examinations last year. Data from UNEB shows that 38,737 passed with three principal passes while 26,986 had two principal passes. 23,327 and 12,818 candidates passed with one principal and subsidiary pass respectively, while 1,433 failed.

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