Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) said Thursday that more male candidates who sat for the Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) exams last year passed to go to the next class as compared to their female counterparts.
While releasing the results at State Lodge, Nakasero, the board’s executive director, Dan Odongo said out of 345,695 candidates who sat for the examinations,173,761 were male and 171,934 were female.
However, just like at Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE), boys have once again performed better than their female counterpart, a trend that has been observed over time.
According to the results,15.5 per cent of boys passed in division one compared to 11.5 females, 23.3 per cent of boys passed in division two compared to 21.0 percent females.
At least 25.5 per cent of boys passed in division three compared to 25.8 per cent of females,31.4 per cent of boys passed in division four compared to 37.0 per cent of girls while 4.3 per cent of boys failed compared to 4.7 per cent of females .
Odongo said that female candidates performed better than their male counterparts in English language while the boys performed better in chemistry.
He observed that candidature increased by 16,063 (4.8%) from 333,396 in 2020 to 349,459, in 2022 reversing the decrease of 4,324 (-1.3%) that had been witnessed in the previous examination.
The candidates sat from 3,703 centres.
Of these, 114,181 (32.7%) were USE beneficiaries. The number of male candidates registered is
175,768 (50.3%) and that of females is 173,691 (49.7%).
“The difference is 2,077 more males than females who registered for the examination. In 2019, the number of females had surpassed that of the males, for the first time, by 398. The gap, in favour of males, appears to be resurfacing. In 2022, 345,695 candidates (173,761 males and 171,934 females) appeared for the examination compared to 330,592 candidates who appeared for the examination in 2020. his is an increase of 15,103 (4.6%) candidates,” Mr Odongo said.