A whopping 74, 875 candidates who wrote the 2020 Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) have failed, according to the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) Executive Secretary, Dan Odongo.
Speaking at the results release function at State House Entebbe, this (Friday) afternoon, Odongo said the ungraded candidates account for 10.2% and have been advised to repeat.
He said results of 2,220 candidates have been withheld pending completion of investigations into examination malpractice adding that some cases involved external assistance given to candidates inside examination rooms.
However, Mr Odongo said that 81,864 (about 11%) of the 734,788 candidates passed in Division 1; 334,711 (56%) in Division 2; 146,142 (76.6%) in Division 3 and 97,193 (89.8%) in Division 4.
“A total of 749, 761 candidates from 14,300 centres registered for PLE 2020 compared to the 695,804 in 2019513,085 (68.4%) were UPE beneficiaries,” he said.
He said that 53 candidates sat for 2020 PLE from Prison.
“Of these, five passed in 1st division, 23 in division 2; 11 in 3rd, another 11 in 4th and 3 were ungraded.”
The Executive Security revealed that candidates’ performance in English and Mathematics were poorer. Female pupils performed better than males in English while the reverse is true for the other three subjects that include Social Studies & Religious Education, Integrated Science and Mathematics.
“As we have reported in previous years, candidates’ performance in English and Mathematics tended to be poorer in questions requiring free expression or application of learned concepts in problem solving situations,” he said noting that candidates performed better in questions that were direct and based on recall.
