The Ministry of Education and Sports has warned schools against inflating examination fees.
While addressing the media on Wednesday at the Media Centre in Kampala, Alex Kakooza the permanent Secretary Education ministry, warned that the registration fees had not been increased at all.
The Permanent Secretary equally called upon parents of the candidates to be vigilant and not allow them to be exploited and that they should take the responsibility of making sure that their children are registered.
He said that whenever the time for doing exams reaches, there are children who miss out on examinations simply because the school authorities eat money and fail to register them.
Kakooza said that parents should go beyond paying school fees and go find out the information concerning the registration of their children and if they sense any danger, they should report to the ministry for the intervention.
Ismail Mulindwa, the director for basic and secondary education says that they have received reports that private schools were inflating UNEB fees and that some selfish directors have become a burden to the parents by charging illegal UNEB fees.
Mulindwa remarked that if they find any school doing so, its license will be cancelled and for government schools, the head teachers will be put to task to explain.
According to the new calendar, the candidates will sit for their Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) starting 1 March 2021, Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) on March 30 and 31 while the Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) will start 12 April 2021.
The registration of candidates started Thursday 22 October 2020 and according to Kakooza, it will run for five weeks and all schools must ensure that they register their candidates as there will be no extension.
Rose Nabukenya Mukasa, the UNEB Principal Examination Officer, says that the penalty for the schools that inflates fees is embedded within the UNEB Act.
The approved UNEB/ Registration Fees Structure is as follows; PLE is shillings 34,000 (Thirty four thousand shillings), UCE is shillings 164,000 (One hundred and sixty four thousand shillings) and UACE is 186,000 (One hundred and eighty six thousand shillings)
Nabukenya says that the ministry has added more 157 new centers for PLE and 100 centers for UCE and UACE where candidates can be registered. This is intended to help candidates get registered with no disruptions of congestions.
For the schools that did not meet the ministry of health SOP requirements, Nabukenya notes that they were told to prepare and inform them for the second supervision. And that when they went back, most of them qualified and few that did not, were advised to take candidates to neighboring schools for registration.
