Policies on retakes crippling students’ academic progress

It is important for students who are joining university to acquaint themselves with university policies such as how to go about failing a course unit in order to avoid situations that may conflict with their studies. For some students, policies on re-sitting a failed exam have hindered their progress and hurt their parents’ pockets.
Esther Nyaduru, a Makerere University alumni, says she thought at university everybody passed until a retake gave her a rude awakening in her first year. “When the results were out, my friend led me to the notice board where a list of students who had been advised to stay put in first year had been pinned. I happened to be among them because of attaining a (Cumulative Grade Point Average) CGPA below 2.0,” says Nyanduru.
“Fortunately, marks of three of my exams had been missing. I followed up and my points were raised and thus I continued to year two,” she adds.

Need for improvement
According to William Tayebwa, head of Journalism department at Makerere University, incidences of re-sitting exams happen when a student fails to get a CGPA 2.0 which he says is realistic because if such a student continues to the next year, they are most likely to get very poor results at the end of their study.
“Aside from that, continuing students can re-sit the exam at Shs20,000 and in their own time but they must attend all the lectures, do coursework and pass it,” says Tayebwa.
He, however, states that there is a limit as to how many times someone can retake a single paper. “When a student fails the same paper three times, then the university discontinues them but they are still in position to apply for another course if they wish to,” he adds.
But if a student fails a paper in their last year, the university has no provisional papers one can sit to enable them graduate with the others. Tayebwa says in such cases, one has to wait and sit the paper with another lot but must pay functional fees and the retake fee before they are permitted to do so.

Timewasting
At Makerere University Business School the policy may be causing students to have a backlog of exams. Rebecca Atim, a student at the college, says this happens when the student is has a CGPA below 2.0 or accumulates more than five retakes.
“There are cases where students who have core subjects have to stay back in a class because they failed the first papers. For instance students offering Accounting 1 and 2, Information Technology 1, 2 and 3 and Business Law 1 and 2. A student cannot continue to another year if they fail paper 1,” says Atim.
Scovia Atimango, (not real names) a final year student, pursuing a Bachelors in Business Administration at MUBS has a backlog which she says is time-wasting because she has to wait and study with those a year below her yet the core subjects are not easy.
“They should let us go ahead to study our second semester, sit exams and then sit for the paper one failed when that time comes but making us wait is wastage of time,” says Atimango.
To avoid being idle while waiting for another year, she takes on work gigs that come up and sometimes attends lectures.
However, Joseph Mayengo, a lecturer at Makerere Business School, says continuing students can have normal studies but they have to make sure they retake the papers they have failed before their final year and those who have in the final year can always be given other papers so that they can graduate with their friends.

Lack of concentration
But Pearl Kamikazi, a second year Bachelors of Library and Secretarial Science at Kyambogo University, says retakes take a lot of student’s time and although one may be able to perform better in the paper they are re-sitting, their performance in other papers might still be affected.
“The time and effort one puts in studying for a failed paper can be used for revision. Therefore, the fact that you are multi-tasking, you will not get the results you would have got if you utilised that time to read for only the current subjects,” says Kamikazi.
According to Hassan Ssematimba, the International university of East Africa spokesperson, the institution allows students to retake papers but the reason as to why they failed in the first place must be valid and they should be in position to pay the named fees.
“The fees is charged because the student has to study the paper again, do the coursework which gives the lecturer more work. It is best to know that when retaking the paper, all classes are compulsory because the student has to take part in all the class activities,” says Ssematimba.
However, due to the strict rules, he says there are limited cases of students with retakes.
He, however, says students who have valid reasons for not performing well are given a recess term where they report and sit the failed papers.