The Minister of Education and Sports, Ms Janet Kataha Museveni officially released the 2023 UCE results at State Lodge Nakasero.

The Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) released the 2023 Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) results, indicating a rise in performance in candidates scoring Division 1.  There was a drop in failures, which means that 329,939 (95.9%) of learners who presented themselves for the examination can progress to the Post – UCE level.

Female candidates performed better than males in the English language. In other subjects, males performed better, with the differences being very significant in History, Geography, sciences and commerce.

UNEB stated that the performance in the sciences continues to be a cause for concern, with less than 20 per cent of the candidates obtaining Credit pass levels in

Physics and Chemistry, and 40 per cent or more unable to pass. There was however an upturn i

n performance in Biology, which has been recording a steady decline.

According to Dan Odongo, the Executive Director of UNEB, 346,816 out of 361,695 candidates who presented themselves in the 2023 examination have achieved results qualifying them to advance to the next educational level.

Additionally, 85,566 individuals, accounting for 23.7 percent, passed in Division Two, while 83,545 candidates, making up 23.1 percent, succeeded in Division Three. Furthermore, 112,923 learners, representing 31.2 percent, attained passing grades in Division Four.

In comparison to the previous year, Odongo highlighted a noteworthy improvement in English language, religious education, mathematics, and biology. However, there were noticeable declines in history, agriculture, and physics.

The performance in other subjects has remained relatively consistent. When commenting on the candidates’ work, Odongo observed a positive shift, noting a reduction in the practice of presenting memorized passages from texts in response to questions that demand original compositions in English language exams. This marks a departure from a long-standing trend that has persisted for decades.

A more in-depth examination of the results reveals that among subjects with a high number of registered candidates, Art (IPS) emerged as the top-performing subject, with an impressive 99.9 percent of its registered candidates achieving at least a pass eight.

Islam Religious Education-IRE and Christian Religious Education – CRE also demonstrated strong performance, with 92 percent and 88.95 percent of candidates passing, respectively. Additionally, IRE witnessed a notable number of candidates obtaining scores above distinction two. Another subject where candidates performed well is Agriculture, with 88.1 percent of those who registered for it successfully passing the examination.