O'Level results: UNEB says cheating majorly in sciences

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The Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) has said that most cases of examination malpractice were found in science subjects. Consequently, UNEB recorded 64 incidents of examination malpractice during the 2024 O'level exams.

UNEB executive director Dan Odongo made the revelation on February 11, 2025, during the release of O’Level examinations results at State House, Nakasero in Kampala city.

“There has been a reduction in cases of malpractice. There are 64 cases with a total of 984 candidates suspected, compared to nearly 3,000 suspected last year. The nature of the items in the papers do not lend themselves to malpractice,” he said.

Odongo, however, said the cases reported are mostly in the science practical papers, with Physics being most affected. Of the cases, 883 (93.1%) are in the Sciences, and only 65 (6.9%) in the rest of the other subjects.

He said in the science cases, there is overwhelming evidence that the candidates were given experimental results by teachers merely to copy. The work done by the candidates do not relate to results recorded.

He disclosed that a total of 359,417 candidates were registered as the first cohort for the examination. Of these 177,133 (49.3%) were males, while 182,284 (50.7%) were females.

Odongo said 136,785 (38.1%) were beneficiaries of the Universal Secondary Education (USE) programme and 222,632 (61.9%) were Non-USE. A total of 357,120 (99.4%) candidates were present for the examination. Only 2,297 (0.6%) were absent.

“The rate of absenteeism continues to drop and this is a good sign,” the UNEB boss said.

According to Odongo, these are the results of the first cohort of candidates under the competency-based curriculum.