The Inspectorate of Government has recommended to the Uganda National Examination Board to install CCTV Camera’s as way of cutting down the levels of malpractices in national exams at Primary Leaving Exams, Uganda Certificate of Education and Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education.
This comes hardly three months ahead of the annual national examinations that will begin in October with the Uganda Certificate of Education exams officially beginning at around that time.
While presenting a study carried out by the Inspectorate of Government on the effectiveness of the measures instituted by UNEB to fight the examination malpractices at the Uganda Media Center the Inspector General of Government Raphael Baku has said UNEB should consider using CCTV cameras in places where it prints exams from.
IGG Raphael Baku
The IGG has also made other recommendations like the idea of having UNEB change setters, examiners and moderators who deal with examinations every five years as a means to ensure that more teachers are involved in the moderating and setting of these exams as this will curtail on the possibility of examiners setters and moderators aiding examination malpractices.
Though UNEB has largely embraced these recommendations of the study it has however declined to embrace the aspect of changing examiners, setters and moderators of exams every five years.
The Chairman of UNEB Prof. Lutalo Bossa has told journalists that it would not be practically advantageous to change the examiners, setters and moderators because some examiners, setters and moderators do their work well and it would therefore be simply unreasonable to take them off their jobs just for the sake of it.
Some of the key aspects that the office of the IGG noted to be key causes of examination malpractices are the lack of integrity and professional ethics, the rural- urban gap in education where by many schools in rural areas are largely ill prepared for exams compared to their urban counter parts and the commercialization of education in Uganda.
Many people will be watching to see how far the IGG can go in trying to assist UNEB fight malpractices an evil that dates as far back as to the days of the East African Examinations Council in 1971 when O and A level exams were said to have leaked in Kampala, Jinja and Mbale. These Malpractices have continued to grow largely to date number of forms in Uganda.
By Tiberindwa Zakaria, Ultimate Media