At least 126 candidate are being investigated by the Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) after their 2019 Uganda Advanced Certificate of Examination (UACE) results were withheld over malpractice.

The Uneb Executive secretary, Mr Daniel Odongo said that the affected candidates are from 26 centers distributed across the country.

Mr Odongo said Thursday that the most common form of examination malpractice have been external assistance, substitution of scripts, impersonation and smuggling of unauthorized materials into the examination room.

“Mathematics, Biology and Chemistry were the major subject mainly affected. The candidates will be accorded a fair hearing before our decision is taken,” he said while releasing the exam results in Kampala on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Mr Odondo revealed that female candidates outperformed their male counterparts in all the subjects that were taken by candidates who sat for the 2019 UACE.

“Despite the fact that female candidates were few, they performed better than their male counterparts at all levels. The failure rates among female candidates is also lower at 0.9 percent as compared to their male counterparts at 1.7 percent,” he said.

In terms of percentages, female candidates performed better at the principal pass A to E in art subjects, Mathematics and Agriculture while their male counterparts were better in Chemistry, Biology, Arts and General paper.

“The performance of females surpassing their male counterparts in this level is different from that of PLE and UCE where the male outperform male,” he said.