Tens of thousands of Senior Four candidates preparing to sit this year’s Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) exams could end up without complete results after their schools failed to submit continuous assessment (CA) scores on time, the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) has revealed. Separately, the board has thrown out roughly 2,000 candidates registered under false claims of disability.
According to UNEB data, about 18 percent of the 503,214 candidates registered for this year’s UCE exams currently have no CA scores on file — marks that make up a fifth of a candidate’s final grade. Under the current grading system, a student missing CA scores is not graded even if they perform perfectly on the written papers, since those account for only 80 percent of the total mark.
UNEB Executive Director Dan Odongo said the board has repeatedly appealed to affected schools to submit the outstanding scores, with limited success. As of the briefing, CA submission stood at 82 percent. He set September 30, 2026 as the final deadline for schools to submit Term II Senior Four CA and project scores, warning that candidates whose marks are not in by then will not be graded.
Odongo explained that failure to meet the deadline means those roughly 90,578 candidates would not receive UCE certificates, and their result slips would instead read “Result 2” — effectively a failure to qualify for progression to Senior Five, meaning affected students would have to repeat Senior Four next year.
Odongo made the announcement while briefing journalists at the Uganda Media Centre during the official release of the 2026 examination timetables.
This year, UNEB registered its largest-ever candidate pool. A total of 1,627,885 candidates are registered across Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE), UCE and Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE), compared to 1,416,446 last year — an increase of 211,455 candidates, or roughly 14.9 percent.
Of the total candidature, women make up the slight majority at 52 percent, against 48 percent for male candidates. More than half of all candidates — 52 percent — are beneficiaries of universal education programmes, including Universal Primary Education (UPE), Universal Secondary Education (USE) and Universal Post O-Level Education and Training (UPOLET) for A-level students.
UACE recorded the sharpest jump, rising from 166,400 candidates in 2025 to 203,875 this year — a 22.5 percent increase. UCE followed, growing from 432,163 last year to 503,214 this year, up 16.4 percent. At PLE level, candidates rose from 818,885 in 2025 to 920,796, a 12.4 percent increase.
Odongo attributed the surge to improved access to education and rising completion rates. He noted that before the COVID-19 pandemic, annual candidate growth typically ranged between 3 and 5 percent, but the trend spiked sharply during the pandemic years — particularly at PLE level — as parents pulled children from lower classes to sit PLE early. Growth has since settled into a range of around 10 percent annually, which he attributed largely to more children completing school.
The 2026 examinations will open on Thursday, October 8, with a briefing for UCE candidates. UCE candidates begin writing on Monday, October 12, starting with mathematics in the morning and chemistry in the afternoon, while special-needs candidates will sit general science (chemistry) that day.
PLE candidates will write their first paper on Friday, October 30, following a briefing, while the UACE briefing is scheduled for Friday, November 6. PLE candidates begin their exams on Tuesday, November 3, starting with mathematics in the morning and Social Studies and Religious Education in the afternoon.
UACE candidates will sit their first papers on Monday, November 9, beginning with History Paper 1 and Principal Mathematics Paper 1 in the morning, followed by History Paper 2 and Principal Mathematics Paper 2 in the afternoon.
This year’s UCE candidates form the third cohort to be assessed under the Competency Based Curriculum (CBC), while UACE candidates remain the pioneers of CBC at the lower secondary level.
Odongo added that the number of examinable papers per subject has been reduced from three to two, while the number of papers allocated to candidates with special needs has also been adjusted to reflect the changes.
The UNEB chief confirmed that the public display of candidates’ registers, as mandated by the UNEB Act, will continue until October 7, 2026, urging parents and candidates to verify their details with their respective schools to catch any errors.
Alongside the rise in overall candidature, UNEB also flagged a troubling pattern: several candidates without disabilities have reportedly been registered as special-needs learners in order to fraudulently access the extra 45 minutes and additional assistance granted during exams.
Board data shows that of 8,090 candidates registered as learners with disabilities, an audit found that 2,000 had faked their conditions. Odongo said the practice has been traced partly to some headteachers — particularly at primary level — who report non-existent cases of special-needs candidates. In other instances, disability types are deliberately or mistakenly misreported, most commonly involving dyslexia and low vision.
Contacted for comment, Acting Minister for Education and Sports Dr John Chrysostom Muyingo attributed the rising candidature to government investment in school infrastructure and curriculum reforms. He pointed to the construction of new seed schools and the formal registration of private schools as factors that have widened access.
Muyingo added that continued investment in curriculum reform has helped make learning more engaging for children, and that government campaigns against school dropout are showing gradual progress. “We are not where we want to be, but we are moving gradually. I want to ask the public to trust government programmes,” he said.
Didas Orikiriza, Executive Director of the National Private Education Institutions Association, credited the rise in candidature to improved access to education, crediting private schools for playing a significant role. However, he noted that delayed submission of CA scores continues to affect several rural schools still grappling with challenges around UNEB’s e-registration system.
Ismail Kafeero, headteacher of Tumu Muslim Secondary School in Mityana, linked the growth in candidature to a generation of citizens that increasingly values education.
