By Patrick Jaramogi
As Ugandans got taken up by the Pope’s visit and departure, the parliamentary nominations, and the on-going presidential campaigns across the country, Uganda National Examinations board (UNEB) went ahead with its plans of ensuring that results are released in time.
Despite all the above events, the marking of the Primary Leaving examinations (PLE) went on and has ended. We can authoritatively inform you that the compilation of the PLE exam results has begun.
Similarly the marking of the Uganda Ordinary Level (Senior 4 leavers) examinations started as planned at weekend (December 5th and ends on December 17th). The marking of Advanced Level (S.6 leavers) papers begins immediately after the Christmas holidays.
Examiners report
We took it upon us to visit the various UNEB marking centres across the country where over 10,000 examiners are camped. Our undercover investigation discovered that the examiners begun arriving from across the country on Thursday 3rd December with Friday 4th December being the deadline for arrival.
Which are the centres?
Apart from the beginning of the examinations, PLE, O level and A level and the release of the results that are much hyped and covered by the media, many don’t know what takes place before the exams are released.
We shall inform you today that the marking of these examinations and checking actually takes place in leading secondary and primary schools spread across Kampala, Mukono, Wakiso and Luwero. And these centres can easily be accessible, as we did and now report. We are reliably informed that the schools are the same but the examining keeps changing per subject from school to school each and every year. The examining centres used by UNEB include;
- Kibuli senior secondary school
- Nabisuunsa Muslim Girls secondary school
- Naggalama Girls secondary School
- Seroma Christian High School
- Namagunga Girls School in Lugazi
- Seeta High Main campus
- Nsambya Girls Secondary school
- Seeta Green Campus- Mukono
- Seeta Mbalala campus
- Namugongo Vocational School
- St. Charles Lwanga Kakiri
- St. Marys Kisubi
- Namagunga Primary School
Why these schools?
According to UNEB, the schools are chosen basing on a number of reasons such as security, cleanliness, accessibility, integrity and sanitation and ‘connections’. Yes, connections because these schools are paid a fee by UNEB for utilising their premises and utilities such as water and power.
What happens at the examining centres?
It is like any other day at these marking centres. Apart from the usual security guards at the school gates, security is not so tight just like we saw, beat it, disguised and had access to. Just an introduction, that; “I am here for marking” was enough to get us inside.
The guards zero much on checking for phones, papers, and pens which are forbidden at the centers. But still we managed to enter with other phones, leaving a relatively “cheap” one behind at the gate wrapped with our names to be taken after the ‘marking’ ends.
The two days when the examiners arrive is not hectic as they wait to get briefings on what is expected from them and the laws to be followed during the two weeks, and rules of the game. So for Thursday until Saturday there wasn’t much at the various centers that we managed to visit. The examiners, who are experienced secondary school teachers at various secondary schools, arrive with only bed-sheets and personnel effects such as clothing. They are then allocated beds (in the various dormitories) along with sanitary.
At Nabisuunsa Muslim Girls school were close to 500 examiners are camped, the marking of English Paper I is taking center stage. Those who recall, English Paper I is the most hardest to mark, it is English Composition and no wonder, it is the highest paid by UNEB. Each examiner gets paid shs500 (five hundred shillings).
Another highly paid paper is General Paper done at A level. We discovered that UNEB has hired 6,800 examiners to mark the 17 compulsory subjects. This means at least 400 examiners per subject. There are a total of 17 compulsory subjects, namely’ English Language (2 papers), Mathematics (2 papers), Chemistry, Physics, and Biology (3 papers each), History (2 papers) and Geography (2 papers). But there are 30 subjects that are sat by senior 4 candidates countrywide.
Early riser
At Nabisuunsa were we spent two days, the examiners wake up as early as 4am, do their shower and enter the examining room by 6am until 7am when they have the first set of breakfast. The heavy breakfast that consists of milk tea, bread, eggs and ripe bananas is enough to push the over 500 teachers until 10am when they have another break. They then return in the examining hall until 1pm when they break off for lunch, similarly heavy buffet type of lunch arrangement. From 2-5pm they are back at it again until around 5pm when they break off for shower and supper before resuming the marking at 7pm until 10pm when they retire for sleep.
Holy Hour
Now for Christians and believers, this has nothing to do with prayers at all. It is the jargon that I learnt among the examiners especially those marking at the Muslim centres such as Kibuli and Nabisuunsa where alcohol is a taboo.
The Holy Hour is the time between 10-pm- 11pm when the teachers are allowed to go out for drinking. Indeed teachers love the “bitter” that they decided to baptise this hour ‘Holy Hour’. But do you think one hour is enough for the bitter? For Malwa takers, it is not even enough for adere. (That malwa served in calabash among our brothers from Teso land).
For the sake of Nabisuunsa, the man at the gate benefits indeed as we realised that the examiners who go out to the suburbs of Banda, Kireka, Kyambogo and Bweyogerere for the “Holy Hour” return some as late as 3am but bribe the ascari (with as little as shs1,000) to have access back to the examining premises. At the “catholic examining centres” like Namagunga, Seeta and Naggalama, the “Holy Hour’ is right in the compound of the school premises.
Here it is business unusual as service providers are hired to provide services of the bitter right at the door steps of the marking rooms. Unlike the Muslim centres, here the examiners enjoy the bitter until wee hours of the morning.
UNEB spends millions in examination
Parents with candidates know that they fork out huge monies to have their children sit for national examinations. Some schools go an extra mile to ‘cheat’ un-suspecting parents with additional costs on top of the official UNEB exam fees.
UNEB normally charges between shs80,000 to 100,000 for PLE and about shs150,000 to 215,000 for O and A level respectively but some schools charge parents to the extreme of shs200,000 for PLE and 300,000 for O and A level. According to UNEB, much as they acknowledge collecting the exam registration fees, the money, according to UNEB Executive secretary Mathew Bukenya, is put to right use.
Break down
The money collected from the parents is used among others for paying those who set exams, the printing costs, paying scouts, invigilators, monitors, police (who store the exams) transporters, examiners, checkers, data entrants, stationery and packaging among others.
Not forgetting the feeding of the over 10,000 examiners from the over 30 examining centers. The examiners are also paid, each at least shs50,000 to meet incidentals upon arrival and an additional public transport fare to and from the examining centres to their respective districts after marking. The fees for examining is paid sometime in January.
We discovered that a good examiner can mark at least 1000 sheets for the two weeks they are busy at the various centres. That means that for the examiners at Nabisuunsa where over 400 are marking English Paper I, if each examiner ticks 1,000 sheets at shs500 per sheet, UNEB has to cough shs20 million for one paper alone. Though the pricing varies from paper to paper.
Hard to cheat
We need to make it very clear here that cheating during the marking process is rather a hard affair. The marking is based on a conveyor belt type of arrangement. No phones, pens or papers are allowed. ONLY RED PENS that are provided by UNEB is allowed in the examining room. UNEB keeps changing examining centres from year to year.
Like this year Biology is being marked from Seeta High main campus while History is being examined at Seeta Green Campus in Mukono, English Paper II is being examined at Namugongo Vocational and so on and this is not what happened last year.
The examiners only get to know where they are going to mark from when they receive their letters from UNEB. After the marking, another set of people, come in to check for any errors before the data entrants start their compilation work and wait for Mathew Bukenya to hand over the results to the Education Minister to release the final results.
Numbers
This year a total of 314,286 students sat for the various 30 ordinary leaving examinations. An additional 1, 037, 219 candidates sat for the Primary Seven (P7) leaving examinations. The marking for these are completed while the marking of the papers for the 102,108 senior 6 leavers examinations begins in first week of January.
Dropped
Next time we shall explore the dropout rate. We have checked from statistics that seven years ago, a total of 1,946,318 pupils joined primary one but when we cross checked those who sat last year, only 1,037,219 made it meaning a total of 909,099 (close to a million) pupils dropped along the way.