Why girls have outperformed boys in 2022 UACE results released today

Female candidates have performed better than girls in last year’s Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) exams, Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) has revealed.

The national examination board has been observing this trend for the last four consecutive years, raising eyebrows and drawing attention to the changing dynamics in education in the country.

The Executive Director of UNEB, Daniel Odongo, said that a total of 96, 557 candidates sat for UACE, with 40, 219 of them being female and 56, 023 being male.

But despite female candidates being fewer than the boys, they performed better.

Odongo notes that the percentage of passes at the upper level of 3 and 2 principal passes is higher for female candidates, while the percentage passes and failure rate at the lower level among girls are lower than boys.

In terms of percentages, female candidates performed better than their male cunterparts at the principal level pass (A-E) in Arts (Humanities), Mathematic and Physics.

Male candidates were better in Agriculture, Chemistry, Biology, Art and General Paper.

Female entries for the Sciences and Mathematics have remained lower than that of the males, consistent with the fact that overall female entry is lower than that of the males.

Candidature was 29.6% for Mathematics, 6.1%% for Physics, 16.5% for Chemistry; and 15.9%% for Biology.

This observation highlights the remarkable achievement of the female candidates, who have managed to perform well even in the face of societal challenges and gender biases.

The trend is particularly significant as it represents a reversal of the traditional trend seen in the Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) and Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE), where boys typically outperformed girls.

However, at A’Level, girls have consistently outperformed their male counterparts for the last four years.
This trend is encouraging as it reflects a shift in mindset and attitudes towards the education of girls.

Generally, UNEB chairperson, Prof Mary Okwakol, notes that the performance of the candidates has improved especially at the upper level of candidates obtaining 3 Principal passes. At the other levels, the pass rates are comparable, she said.

Odongo revelaed that an analysis of the overall performance in the examination shows that a very high percentage of candidates (99.2%) qualified for the award of the UACE, just as was in 2020.