The Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) has confirmed that 503,055 candidates are registered to sit for this year’s Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) examinations.
Of these, 264,722 are female candidates and 238,333 are male, representing a 16.4 percent increase from the 432,165 candidates who sat for the examinations last year.
The candidates include 187,918 government-sponsored students under the Universal Secondary Education (USE) programme and 154,642 privately sponsored candidates, registered across 4,514 UNEB examination centres.
Speaking to journalists in Kampala, UNEB Executive Director Dan Odongo warned candidates against examination malpractice and urged them to adhere to the rules and regulations governing the examinations.
Meanwhile, UNEB says more than 500 examination centres did not register candidates for the final examinations this year. The affected centres include 48 UCE centres, 71 Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) centres and 31 Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) centres.
Odongo said UNEB will investigate whether the affected schools had no candidates to register or whether the failure was due to negligence by head teachers.
He revealed that three schools only registered their candidates this morning after parents stormed the institutions demanding explanations after discovering that their children’s names were missing from the examination registers. In some cases, schools had also failed to display the UNEB registers on their notice boards.
This year’s examinations are being conducted under the theme: “Advancing Excellence in Assessment and Certification through Secure, Credible, Inclusive and Innovative Processes.”
Senior Four candidates today held their briefing sessions ahead of the examinations. They are expected to begin writing their papers on Monday, October 12, and conclude on November 3, 2026.
END