Exams will be based on new curriculum, UNEB reaffirms

Exam body, UNEB has reaffirmed that this year’s national exams will be based on the newly introduced abridged curriculum released by the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC).

Last year, government unveiled a new post covid curriculum that will help learners cope under the automatic promotion arrangement necessitated by the two year lull due to the pandemic.

In a statement released on Friday, the UNEB Executive Director Dan Odongo said they will not depart from an earlier decision made to use the new curriculum for the national exams this year.

“The board would like to assure head teachers and learners that UNEB will not depart from the guidelines provided by the ministry regarding the abridged curriculum. This is therefore to reaffirm that this year’s assessment will be in accordance with the abridged curriculum arrangements as approved by the Ministry of Educations and Sports,” Odongo said.

He reminded teachers and learners that national exams will be conducted between October 14 to November 16 for UCE, November 7 to 9 for PLE and November 18 to December 9 for UACE.

In the beginning, there were several concerns from teachers and learners that materials for the abridged curriculum had not been widely circulated to schools.

However, this has since been rectified.

Another concern that rose up was on the grading system basing on the new curriculum.

For example, during the old curriculum, learners’ performance was presented in terms of percentages with scores of between o and 100 percent but for the lower secondary curriculum, this has changed to ensure learners are graded basing on the competence exhibited in the subjects they are offering.

This means, students are graded on a scale of 1, 2, and 3 as all marks are out of a cumulative mark of 20% whose average at the end of senior four will be sent to UNEB as continuous assessment.

The national exams at the end of the year will then add the 20% onto the 80% it will use for assessment in the final exams.

In simple terms, the students will work for 20% of the marks during the school assessment and UNEB exams will only account for 80%.