School marks for sale: Top UNEB officials fired

KAMPALA - The Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) has fired two of its staff for attempting to change marks in favour of certain schools during last year’s examination marking exercise. 

The two officers, who were serving as “officers in charge of data entry” at two examination marking centres, were unearthed by the UNEB’s system when the numbers they entered into the system did not tally. 

According to sources familiar with the development, one of the staff worked as a public relations assistant at UNEB, while the other worked in the department responsible for chemicals and reagents used during examination. 

The staff were nabbed during the 2024 Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) examination marking exercise, which was concluded early this year. 

“After internal investigations, the officers were dismissed and they handed over office this week,” the source, who spoke on anonymity grounds, said. 

UNEB speaks out 

The dismissal of the two officers was confirmed in a statement issued by Dan Odongo, the UNEB executive director. 

The UNEB statement was in response to a whistle-blower on social media, who described “How UNEB Staff Trade Marks for Money” in a 723-word dossier. 

According to Odongo, UNEB instituted strong layers of security that are able to detect any form of malpractice related to altering of scores or marks of candidates and that “it is through such measures that the Board’s security system was able to quickly discover the attempts by two members of staff to tamper with scores of candidates.”
 
Although the viral social media story alleged that the said UNEB officers have been contacted by schools since 2018, Odongo indicated in the statement that there was no evidence of security breaches found to support this. 

In addition, Odongo indicated that there were no other UNEB staff (except the two) that were implicated in the botched malpractice following investigations.

Staff plead guilty 

According to Odongo, UNEB undertook five key measures, including handing over the suspects to the Police for further investigations.

The UNEB boss noted that the two culprits were subjected to the board’s internal disciplinary processes, where they pleaded guilty to making attempts to tamper with the marks. 

“They also confessed that they were attempting to do this for the first time. It is, therefore, not true, as indicated in the social media report, that this kind of malpractice has been going on for some years. 

Due to the gross nature of violation of the board’s values, the two members of staff have been dismissed from the services of the board,” Odongo said in the statement, adding: “The board re-validated scores on the scripts from the suspected centres and established that the perpetrators had not succeeded in altering any scores in the systems.”

The dossier 

In the dossier, the whistleblower indicated that fraudulent activity of altering candidates' marks occurs not during data entry when candidates' final scores are officially input into the UNEB system. 

According to the whistleblower, the matter came to the attention of the public following the arrest of a purported fraudster in Lira district. 

The whistleblower indicates that the individual had been duping several headteachers and school owners by falsely claiming that their students’ results were at risk of cancellation due to alleged malpractice. 

The whistleblower indicated that the fraudster even produced accurate index numbers of candidates and cited genuine malpractice concerns. 

“Investigations discovered that he was obtaining this sensitive information from insiders within UNEB. During the Police interrogation, the suspect disclosed that he was part of a wider network involving UNEB Staff. He revealed that he had been provided with a list of candidates’ index numbers and their examination centres data he used to extort money from school administrators under the pretext of “resolving” their student exam malpractice issues.” 

The whistleblower alleged that one of the officers accused had been approached by various schools requesting him to alter marks in the system for financial gain. 

Given his repeated assignment to UACE marking centres over the years, the Whistleblower noted that the UNEB officer had built a steady network of schools willing to pay for marks and grade manipulation. The corruption ran deep.