At every start of exam season, the Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) warns head teachers, heads of centres, parents and candidates against engaging in malpractice. However, as YUDAYA NANGONZI reports, the warnings seem to fall on deaf ears at some schools.
Uneb has cancelled the results of 730 PLE and 1,067 UCE candidates, all who sat in 2015. The results of at least 279 students were also withheld, partly due to exam malpractices in the same year.
In an interview with The Observer, Uneb executive secretary Dan N Odongo said his office is closely monitoring schools where large numbers of results have been cancelled in previous years.
“We are following up on these cases and should anything of this nature happen again, the centres will be withdrawn for a very long time,” Odongo said.
Currently, Uneb can withdraw examination centres for up to five years. However, Odongo is concerned that the Uneb Act of 1983 does not have enough deterrent measures to handle culprits of malpractice. Despite many changing trends in the education system, the act has never been revised to give Uneb the authority it needs, to stay ahead of culprits.
But help is on the way for Odongo and his colleagues, through a policy review in which the board is proposing more punitive actions.
“We have gone ahead to revise the policy and it is ready. What we are doing now is to write the principles that will be presented to cabinet, explaining why the act is being reviewed, what aspects are being reviewed, what aspects it aims to cure and the deficiencies in the old act,” he said.
He added that the Uneb board is preparing to present the principles to the education minister, Janet Museveni, who will in turn present them to cabinet.
“And once cabinet officially asks the First Parliament council to draft the new act and prepare a bill, they will just be polishing what they have, because we have been closely working with it to review the act,” he said.
LIMITED SCOPE
According to Odongo, the current policy is very limited in scope on issues of examination malpractice and its penalties, thus the need for one which is more explanatory.
For instance, if one is in charge of invigilation in a room where candidates are found to have been assisted, the law does not specifically charge the invigilator.
Yet, Odongo feels the law should hold such invigilators accountable for negligence of duty. In the end, the whole process of malpractice heavily affects candidates by having their results withheld and later cancelled if found guilty by the Uneb security committee.
Although Uneb sometimes withdraws centre numbers of schools where malpractice is found to have happened, these institutions have another opportunity to get it back after some time.
This year, three schools that were involved in malpractice during O-level exams had their centres withdrawn for two years, and a review is due to determine whether they can reinstate their centres.
The schools are Loretoh SS (104 candidates) in Mukono, Mivule SS Bukakata (44) in Masaka, and Booma International School in Mbarara (40). Some students were caught copying from chits in their pockets, while others craned their necks to look at other candidates’ work and, in some, there was external assistance from teachers. At Loreto SS, there were several subjects where candidates were caught cheating.
“There are other instances where people are arrested in relation to exam malpractice and when the state attorneys look at policy, there is no section under which to charge them,” Odongo said.
“The only option is going to the penal code to see whether there is something related to their offence.”
Odongo cited a 2015 case in Manafwa district where a man was found impersonating a candidate in UCE exams and was only imprisoned for 12 days, due to lack of specific penalties in the Uneb Act 1983.
Under article 18 of this act, which explains the penalties and offences, “any person who knowingly or negligently reveals the contents of any examination to an unauthorized person, whether a candidate or not commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding Shs 50,000 or to a term of imprisonment not exceeding two years or to both such fine and imprisonment.”
The only penalties in the act also apply to a person who, with intent to gain employment or admission, presents a forged certificate or diploma purported to have been issued by the board.
Commenting on the fine, Odongo said: “This could have been a lot of money in 1983 but today, this is pocket change to very many people. So, nobody feels the pain with this fine of Shs 50,000.”
NEW MEASURES
Consequently, Uneb has introduced some measures as it waits for the approval of their proposed principles to cabinet. For teachers that deliberately continue to disclose confidential information sent to them for practical subjects, some adjustments have been made in the period within which the information is sent to schools.
In the new arrangement, as soon as Uneb issues guidelines to schools, the materials and information must be locked in the head teacher’s office and the head of science is supposed to get the details in the confines of the same office.
This, according to Uneb, will reduce on the rate at which teachers and laboratory technicians have been disclosing the information to students. Odongo also warned candidates that if they engage in malpractice for one paper, all their entire papers shall be canceled.
For the three levels of examinations (UCE, PLE and UACE), the board has examined a total of 1,068,224 candidates this year. In the 2015 exams, Uneb scouts detected some cases of impersonation, collusion, external assistance and smuggling of unauthorized materials while cheating occurred mostly in science practical papers, theory papers as well as Mathematics.
With this season’s exams set to end next week, Odongo hopes that once the revised policy is passed into law, the benefits will be immense.
nangonzi@observer.ug