The just-released 2024 Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) results, announced at a packed ceremony in State House Nakasero and presided over by the Minister of Education and Sports, offer a richly layered snapshot of Uganda’s primary-education landscape, with girls outperforming boys in English Language while boys retain the edge in Mathematics, even as overall pass rates rise and absenteeism falls to a five-year low.

Under the theme “Embracing Security and Holistic Assessment of Learners in a Dynamic Environment,” UNEB Executive Director Dan Nokrach Odongo emphasised the board’s commitment to safeguarding examination integrity while assessing pupils across cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains—an approach designed to keep pace with rapid technological change and evolving learner needs.

Enrolment and Gender Picture

This examination cycle drew 797 444 candidates from 14 883 centres, a 6.4 percent increase over 2023, and, for the third year running, girls formed the majority—418 750 candidates, or 52.5 percent, compared with 378 709 boys, or 47.5 percent. Of the total cohort, 65.7 percent benefited from Universal Primary Education (UPE) funding, with the remaining 34.3 percent coming from private schools.

Subject-by-Subject Insights

English Language emerged as the clear stronghold for girls, who logged 17.8 percent Division 1 passes against the boys’ 13.4 percent and achieved a mean score of 64.3 percent compared with 59.7 percent for boys—gains UNEB links to nationwide early-grade reading programmes and vibrant school literacy clubs.

Conversely, Mathematics remained the boys’ domain, with 15.2 percent of male candidates earning Division 1 grades versus 11.6 percent of female candidates, and boys registering a mean of 63.1 percent, 4.3 percentage points above girls—a gap attributed to lingering STEM-confidence issues among upper-primary girls and their under-representation in numeracy clubs and district competitions.

In Integrated Science, the gender gap narrowed to under one percentage point—evidence that practical, experiment-based teaching benefits both sexes—while in Social Studies girls excelled in reading-heavy questions and boys edged ahead on map-reading and data-analysis items.

Inclusivity Gains and Security Milestones

UNEB reported a 25.5 percent surge in special-needs candidates, from 2 652 in 2023 to 3 328 in 2024, with 47.9 percent of those learners being girls, a testament to rising community awareness and improved accommodations such as braille papers, enlarged print, and sign-language interpreters. In addition, 108 prison inmates—71 at Luzira Upper Prison and 37 at Mbarara Main Prison—sat the examinations, showing promising performance and underscoring the power of education in rehabilitation.

Exam security measures—tamper-evident packaging, GPS-tracked distribution routes, and last-mile community escorts—helped drive the absenteeism rate down to just 0.7 percent, the best figure in half a decade.

Policy Signals and Classroom Actions

• Strengthen girl-focused STEM initiatives—all-female maths clubs, robotics teams, and mentorship links with university engineering students—to convert girls’ English strengths into numeracy confidence.
• Embed literacy across maths and science—explicit vocabulary instruction and word-problem workshops—to help boys bolster reading skills while reinforcing content mastery for everyone.
• Scale inclusive-technology grants so every UPE school can purchase braille kits, hearing devices, and accessible e-content, sustaining the surge in special-needs participation.
• Use UNEB item-analysis data to pinpoint sub-counties where girls’ maths scores lag most, then deploy targeted lesson-study cycles and coaching for teachers.

If your school, district, or organisation is ready to turn these data insights into measurable classroom impact—whether by joining the “Mathematics for Her” pilot, downloading inclusive resource packs, or scheduling bespoke professional-development sessions—email us at info@kawa.ac.ug or call +256 414 467 067 today. Together, we can ensure that the impressive gains of the 2024 PLE translate into long-term, equitable success for every Ugandan learner.