A new report indicates that Uganda is likely to face shortage of female doctors and engineers in the future as girls’ performances in science subjects at Ordinary Level (‘O’ Level)continues to takes a nose dive.
The research findings by Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB), ranks girls as the worst performers in Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Mathematics compared to boys in the last three consecutive years.
According to UNEB findings, in the 2012 Uganda Certificate Examinations (UCE) results, 75.6 percent of female candidates who sat for Chemistry scored F9 in the subject compared to their male counterparts whose failure was rated at 66.6 percent.
The research further shows that in 2011, 71.1 percent of girls who offered Chemistry at ‘O’ Level failed while 63.4 percent of boys who sat in the same year failed.
Meanwhile, in 2010, 52.9 percent of female candidates failed to pass Chemistry against 47.8 percent of boys.
The second poorly performed subject is Physics where majority of female candidates continue to find challenges amid plans by government to make science subjects a top priority.
In 2011, 66.7 percent of girls failed Physics and 2012 was the worst with 66.9 percent of those who registered and sat failing the subject.
Although in the same period, there was poor performance in Biology, there was a slight improvement in Mathematics as one of the major subjects.
2012 saw 46.6 percent of girls failing Biology down from 44.5 percent the previous year.
They however, improved in passing Mathematics in 2012 by 6 percent from 20.5 percent in 2011 down to 19.5 percent in the 2012 UCE released results.
While releasing the findings on Thursday in Gulu Secondary School in town, Dr. Saverio Pido, a Senior Researcher with UNEB noted that Uganda will fail to have female scientists in the future if the trend continues.
Dr. Pido explained that, “Majority of the girls continues to fail sciences such as Physics and Chemistry which are the core subjects for one to be admitted into the university in order to pursue medicine or engineering. The result of the findings is not good for a developing country like Uganda which is striving towards sciences and technology.”
He attributed the problem to poor attitude towards science subjects, lack of use of science laboratories and un-conducive learning environment in schools.
The senior researcher who taught physics for many years in several secondary schools in Gulu district says this may affect national growth and development in the future due to the lack of highly skilled manpower.
“Girls in day schools are most affected which limits their ability to concentrate since they are engaged in domestic work after school hours instead of revising their notes,” He said.
Ms Santa Akello, a Biology teacher at Gulu High School in Gulu observed that some the challenges in passing science subjects such as Biology are because they are normally too wide making it difficult for learners to exhaust the whole subject matter before sitting for exams.
Akello said, “Unlike arts subject such as History, many candidates find problems when it comes to passing sciences.”
The report analyzed performance in sciences and mathematics at Uganda Certificate of Education and the Gender Perspective sampled 200 schools across the country.
A total of 9,983 scripts of male and 12, 7007 of candidates were sampled for the analysis.
80 teachers and 400 students also participated in the study.