The Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) has proposed tomorrow (Thursday) as the day to release the 2016 Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) results.

Uneb spokesman Hamis Kaheru said yesterday that once the minister of Education and Sports, Janet Museveni, agrees with the proposed date, the results will be released to the public.

“Our work as Uneb was done and we formally communicated to the minister. It is upon her to tell us if she will be available on the proposed date. As Uneb, we don’t release exams but examine candidates, mark scripts and issue result slips and certificates,” Kaheru explained.

This is the first Uneb exam to be released in the post-Jessica Alupo era. Ms Museveni succeeded Alupo as minister of education in the post-2016 elections government.

Just like Ms Museveni, it will be the first examination results that executive secretary Dan N. Odongo releases in his new position. Odongo, who was formerly in charge of secondary examinations at Uneb, succeeded long serving executive secretary Matthew Bukenya who retired last year.

The Observer has learnt that Uneb officials yesterday held a meeting with the minister and it was agreed that the results be released at the President’s Office conference hall at 10am.

Some 640,860 primary seven candidates registered for PLE last year at 12,391 centres across the country. At the start of the exams, Odongo said that more girls (329,346) had registered for the examinations than boys.

In the 2015 examination results, boys performed better than girls in mathematics, science and social studies while girls excelled in English language.

EXAM MALPRACTICES

Meanwhile, the board has been closely monitoring 16 schools whose results for 730 candidates were cancelled in the 2015 PLE exams. Schools that will have engaged in examination malpractices this year will have their results withheld and later accorded a fair hearing by the board’s security committee.

Out of 621,454 candidates that sat for the 2015 exams, 517,895 candidates passed, compared to 516,860 in 2014. Some of the schools to look out for this year that had the highest number of first grade candidates in 2015 results include; Mbarara Municipal School (221), Greenhill Academy and City Parents School (190), Kampala Parents (178) and Leos Junior P/S (177).

Wakiso district led with the highest number of candidates in first grade, followed by Kampala, Mukono, Masaka, Luweero and Mbarara, among others. On the other hand, Amudat district will need to get better results this year after it registered only one candidate in first grade.

After the release of results, parents can check results of a candidate by typing: PLE, leave a space, correct full index number and send to 6600 across all networks.

nangonzi@observer.ug