Senior Four students across the country started their national examination this week, a critical turning point for many young Ugandans in their academic pursuit and an opening for greater opportunities in life. However, reports indicate that many students have missed the exams.
At a school in Mukono, 15 students missed the exams, while another 12 students missed writing the exams in Masaka, just as many in other areas have been reported to have missed the exams. While there are cases of students dropping out of school before exams for various reasons, it is sad that even those who continue to the last point are denied writing the exams.
This is not an isolated year where students are missing exams. In every exam cycle every year, students at all levels of study, who prepare for national exams end up not writing them, even after paying fees, filling the Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) forms. In many cases, they find they are not registered.
Many of these students pay registration fees, but sometimes schools do not forward the fees and registration paperwork to Uneb. This is a system failure that threatens the future of the students.
For affected students, the consequences include being forced to repeat an entire year, which means lost time, lost potential, and added financial burdens on families, demoralisation, wasted investment in terms of time, money, transport to school, and many more consequences that could lead to students dropping out of school altogether. All this points to poor communication between parents, teachers and Uneb. Uneb’s tracking systems must be robust, transparent, with clear confirmation to students that their names appear in the registered list and the government must enforce laws and regulations around exam registration and punish wrongdoing.
To assist the students; the government should ask Uneb and the affected schools to allow the students who missed papers to take remedial exams without being forced to repeat the entire year. Parents should also be involved in the education life of their children to the point of following the registration process well before the exam period. The government’s policy to allow students with unpaid balances to sit the exams must be turned into binding regulation, not just recommendation, with measurable consequences for schools that violate it.
It is not proper that in 2025, students are being locked out of their exams because of administrative problems. The government, Uneb, school administrators must all step up their work, protect students from money-hungry school administrators so that no student is made to repeat an academic year for wrongs they did not commit.