203,809 candidates sit Uganda’s advanced certificate as ministry warns of fraud

More than 203,000 candidates are sitting the Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE), the upper secondary school leaving examination in Uganda, from this Monday 9 November 2026. According to the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB), 203,809 candidates registered this year, a 22.4% increase from last year’s 166,400.

The Ministry of Education and Sports has warned schools against examination fraud, which it says threatens the credibility of qualifications. Timothy Ssejjoba, commissioner for higher education at the ministry, said it would be detrimental to the country if universities admitted students whose good grades had been obtained through cheating. He pointed to pressure from some private schools, which use pupils’ performance as a marketing tool to attract enrolments. “Good grades must be earned. We condemn everyone involved in examination malpractice,” Mr Ssejjoba said.

The commissioner called on education stakeholders to embrace the competency-based curriculum (CBC), which is intended to shift the focus from grades to what pupils can demonstrate and apply in real-life situations, prioritising critical thinking and problem-solving over memorisation.

This session opens after the country threatened in early October to cancel all UCE results in cases of fraud, and after announcing in late October that Uganda will sanction unauthorised school boarding facilities.