Art, Literature, History best done at S.6

The 2019 Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) examinations results released yesterday indicate humanities as top three best performed subjects.

Fine Art tops the list registering 99.7 per cent of the candidates with at least a principal pass followed by Literature in English at 97.8 per cent and History at 96.4 per cent.

Physics and Christian Religious Education follow in fourth and fifth position at 96.1 and 93. 1 per cent respectively.

A statement released by Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) further indicates significant improvement in performance in Mathematics, Physics, Agriculture and Biology compared to the previous year. Mathematics had 81.8 per cent of the students with a principal pass in 2019 compared to 75.1 in 2018, Physics 96.1 per cent from 93.7 per cent, Agriculture at 92.2 per cent from 80 per cent and Biology at 84.4 per cent from 78.8 per cent.

“Female candidates performed better than their male counterparts at the principal level pass in Arts (Humanities), Mathematics, Physics and Agriculture. Male candidates were better in Chemistry, Biology, Art and General Paper.”

There was, however, a major decline in Economics, Entrepreneurship, Geography and Chemistry. The statement shows that 75.5 per cent of candidates who sat Economics in 2019 got at least a principal pass compared to 79.4 per cent in 2018.

Principal passes in Entrepreneurship fell from 94.1 per cent to 91 per cent, while those in Geography declined from 96.7 per cent to 92.8 per cent. And 85.6 per cent of the candidates who sat Chemistry in 2019 got at least a principal pass compared to 91 per cent in 2018.

Despite the improvement, there is still concern over the performance in science subjects.

“Biology continues to be a cause of concern. In the last four years, less than 50 per cent of the candidates obtained passes at principal level. The performance in 2019 has been better than in previous years and hopefully this will continue,” Ms Mary Okwakol, the Uneb chairperson, said.

Uneb Executive Secretary Dan Odongo said the performance has been affected by candidates’ failure to interpret questions and lack of exposure to practical work in the case of science subjects.

“Questions requiring higher order skills were poorly done… There is a problem developing in Biology practical paper where candidates do not carry out the dissection of specimens provided as required but proceed to make drawings crammed from textbooks,” Mr Odongo said.

The Minister for Education, Ms Janet Museveni, said there is need for deliberate efforts to increase the number of teachers of science subjects to achieve better performance.

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