The Inspector General of Government has appealed to Parliament to amend the Uganda National Examination Board Act claiming it curtails on the powers that UNEB has to punish culprits of examination malpractices and thus causing UNEB’s efforts to fight examination malpractices futile.
The IGG Raphael Baku has told journalists at Parliament that the UNEB Act 1983 Cap 137 is inadequate in its ability to fight examinations malpractices because it lacks stiff criminal sanctions for such malpractices for example the penalty of paying a fine of fifty thousand when found engaged in malpractices is not deterrent and therefore not effective in fighting examinations malpractices.
Baku says the Act has no provisions penalizing some malpractices like external assistance, collusion and smuggling of reading material into examination rooms.
He says in the study his office carried out it has also been noted that UNEB finds it hard to gather evidence on examination malpractices because sometimes the offences are committed earlier than the marking and yet some malpractices are noticed during the process of marking and other instances like where the teacher writes answers on the Black Boards for the people doing examinations to copy then rubs off immediately. Such cases are hard to prove.
The IGG says the weak law has left UNEB in a dilemma with no clear course of action to take against the culprits of examinations malpractices.
The IGG has also reported that in some cases UNEB has handed over head teachers and teachers involved in malpractices but the ministry of education has done little or nothing in punishing the culprits for example there is no case of deregistration of any head teacher or teacher in relation to malpractices since 2009 yet since that time, UNEB has been handing over names of culprits of this evil.
By Tiberindwa Zakaria, Ultimate Media
