KAMPALA, UGANDA: The chairperson of the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) Prof Mary J Okwakol has called for national strategies to empower girls to pursue science subjects at A’level.
While speaking at the release of the 2022 Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) examinations results on Friday morning, Prof Okwakol expressed concern over the lower enrollment of girls in science combinations with candidates being as low as 6.1% for mathematics and 15.9% for biology.
Okwakol says that the minister of education directed Uneb and the Ministry of education to lead an investigation to establish the reason for low enrollment “but the study has not kicked off because of funding gaps.”
She warned that the gender gap will result in low numbers of women pursuing Science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related careers before she urged urgent strategies to avert this.
Okwakol further noted that the performance of the candidates in last year’s UACE examinations improved especially at the upper level of candidates obtaining 3 Principal passes. At the other levels, the pass rates are comparable.
“As was the case in the 2020 examination, female candidates have proportionally (in terms of percentages) performed better than the males at all levels, and have shown a lower failure rate. Even at individual subject levels, they have shown a better performance,” she said.
Unlike at UCE and PLE where boys beat girls, the trend has been consistent at A’Level where girls have beat their male counterparts at A’level for the last four consecutive years.
How to check UACE Results
Type UACE, leave a space then type the correct index number of the candidate, e.g. UO000/501 and send to 6600. The service is available on @mtnug and @Airtel_Ug networks.
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