The Executive Secretary of the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) has warned schools against inflating registration fees.
Daniel Odongo, the UNEB secretary made the comments while announcing the commencement of registration exercise for all levels.
He said effective October 22, the examination body will process the registration of candidates at all levels and will last for the next five weeks.
He said PLE candidates are charged UGX34,000, UGX164,000 for UCE students and 186,000 UACE or ‘A’ Level.
“Any additional charges that the school would like to make for administration purposes should clearly be explained to the parents and must not, in any way be referred to as ‘UNEB registration fees,” said Odongo.
Meanwhile, given the abnormal covid-19 situation, the registration period of candidates at all levels has been reduced from 6 months to 5 weeks affective Thursday 22 October with no room for late registration.
The UNEB boss also used the press conference to warn the general public against people that claim to register students yet they are not licensed as schools by the government.
Odongo said some individuals claim to help students do E-Registration but end up making costly errors on the students forms.
Odongo said that although the exercise is relatively simple the urge for money leads the business persons to make mistakes.
“The use of service providers to handle registration has led to errors such as wrong photographs attached to some candidates’ names. It also adds to costs, to the detriment of parents,” he noted.
He however revealed that UNEB has in a timely manner distributed the E- Registration software through District Inspectors of schools and area school supervisors and urged district school inspectors to ensure head teachers register candidates themselves.
“In case of any challenge with the software, the following numbers can be called; 0772481418; 0701481418,” he said.
“The new normal calls for doing things differently, the Electronic Registration is simpler and effective that even 300 students can be registered in a single day, we therefore believe this period is enough,” he said.
Meanwhile, Odongo notes that reports of a number of female candidates getting pregnant during the lock down period have emerged and that as per the Ministry of Education and Sports’ guidance, these girls should not be denied chance to sit for their final exams.
The UNEB boss has warned schools against preventing pregnant girls from registering for exams.
“While we do not condone teenage pregnancy, we recognize that most of these girls are victims of circumstances, holding unintended pregnancies. Many of them are traumatized and denying them the opportunity to sit their final examinations would be double jeopardy,” Odongo said.
Odongo added that denying pregnant students exams also derails the gains of gender inclusiveness attained so far in reducing the disparity between girls and boys.
