Uganda's new lower secondary curriculum grades every O-Level subject as an achievement level, A–E, rather than as a division. This page covers how YoShule reports those levels, and how to set your school up for them.
Everything on this page appears only for a school that runs an O-Level section. If you cannot find these menus, check Settings → Academic — the O-Level screens, the identifier bands and the competency lists are all hidden for a school without one.
What the card shows
A Ugandan lower-secondary report card gives each subject nine columns:
| Column | What it is |
|---|---|
| Asmt Avg. | the raw continuous-assessment mark, out of 100 |
| Asmt (20%) | that mark at its 20% weight |
| Exam (80%) | the exam at its 80% weight |
| Total (100%) | the two added together |
| Grd | the grade the total falls in — A, B, C… |
| CBC Score | the total restated on a 0–3.0 scale, to one decimal |
| Identifier | the word for that score — Outstanding, Moderate… |
| Teacher | who taught the subject |
Under the subjects there is an Average row — every column as its own mean —
and above them a summary: Average: 2.3 · Identifier: Moderate · Scores: 8A's, 5B's, 2C's.
How the CBC score works
The CBC score is the subject total rescaled: total ÷ 100 × 3. A total of 82 scores 2.5; a total of 64 scores 1.9.
It is a rescale of the total, not a value attached to the grade. Two subjects can both show a total of 82 and score 2.5 and 2.4, because the totals behind them are 82.0 and 81.6 — the card rounds only what it prints.
The identifier works the same way, and this catches people out: it bands the unrounded score. Two subjects can both print a CBC of 2.5 and read Moderate and Outstanding, because their exact scores are 2.46 and 2.53 and the boundary is 2.50. That is not a bug — it is how the printed card behaves, and matching it is the point.
Setting it up
- Dashboard → Assessment → Sets — create two sets, for example
Assessmentweighted 20 with purpose Continuous assessment, andExamweighted 80 with purpose Exam. - On each set's page, use Classes to leave Counts toward mark ticked only for the classes that sit them.
- Dashboard → Assessment → Grading — check the O-Level grades (A at 80+, B from 60) and the Identifiers card below them (Outstanding from 2.50, Moderate from 1.50).
- Enter marks as normal. Everything else on the card is derived.
Applying the O-Level curriculum template also turns class positions off on report cards: the scheme is criterion-referenced, so a learner is measured against the standard rather than against the class. Turn them back on under Assessment → Sets if your school ranks anyway — marksheets rank either way. See Report cards.
Assessment sets belong to the whole school, so a school that also runs a primary section must switch the 20/80 pair off for those classes on the set's Classes tab. A class that counts both a continuous-assessment set and an exam set gets the lower-secondary layout — that split is the switch.
Electives: not every learner takes every subject
The curriculum gives a Senior 3–4 candidate seven compulsory subjects and up to two they choose. Senior 1 and 2 run all-compulsory, so the choice is made once, entering S3, and carried to UCE in S4.
Until a school says otherwise every subject is taken by the whole class, which is what S1 and S2 want. For S3 and S4, mark the optional subjects on Subjects → Assignments and record who took them under Assessment → Elective choices — see Elective choices.
Once you do, a report card carries the learner's own subjects rather than everything the class offers, and a paper only some learners sit can finally reach zero outstanding.
Marking a paper out of something other than 100
Not every piece of lower-secondary work is marked out of 100. An Activity of Integration is marked out of 10, 19, 28 or 37 depending on how many competences it covers, and some teachers record the categorisation 1, 2 or 3 directly instead of a mark at all.
Both are the same setting. On Dashboard → Subjects → Assignments, when you generate a subject's papers, each one has a Marked out of box. Leave it blank for an ordinary paper out of 100.
- Set the paper to 19. The marks grid shows
Paper 1 / 19in its heading and accepts marks from 0 to 19. Type 14 and the card shows 74. - Set another to 3. The cell becomes a picker offering 0, 1, 2 and 3 — because at that size a denominator is a list of levels. Pick 2 and the CBC score reads 2.0, "Moderate".
Marks are stored as what they are worth out of 100, so a paper out of 19 and a paper out of 100 sit side by side in the same average, the same pass rate and the same grade bands. The grid, the exported workbook and the re-import all carry the raw mark you typed — the conversion happens once, on the server.
Once a paper has marks against it, what it is marked out of can no longer be changed. Changing it would restate every mark already entered — a 14 out of 19 is 74%, and re-reading it as 14 out of 20 makes it 70% without anyone choosing that. Archive the paper and add another instead.
Where the boundaries come from
The 0–3 scale is national. The Ministry describes the termly report as carrying "the scale of three — 3 means a child is outstanding; 2 is moderate; between 1 and 2, that is basic", and the conversion onto it as dividing by the total and multiplying by three. That is what YoShule computes.
The letter grades are not. A–E are UNEB's certificate levels, awarded at the end of the cycle. UNEB publishes no percentage ranges for them and discourages reading any into them. So a school printing letters on a termly card is choosing its own boundaries — and real cards differ, one running A from 80 and another A+ from 90. The A 80+ / B 60+ defaults here are read off one real card, and the lower bands are an even split because no candidate on it scored low enough to show them. Change them on the Grading page.
Competency areas and project work
The curriculum reports things about a student that no subject can hold. YoShule records four areas, under Dashboard → Assessment → Competency & Projects, one class and term at a time:
| Area | What it is |
|---|---|
| Generic skills | The five the curriculum names — communication, critical thinking, and so on |
| Games, sports and clubs | Whatever this school actually runs |
| Values | Only if your school chooses to print them — see below |
| Project work | Several a year is normal, not one |
Setting up what gets rated
The lists themselves live under Dashboard → Assessment → Grading, in What the card rates besides subjects. Each of the three is edited on its own — saving the skills list never touches your clubs.
- Generic skills are seeded by the O-Level curriculum template. Edit or rename them; a school that reports four of the five changes the list rather than working around it.
- Games, sports and clubs start empty. No template can guess which ones a school runs.
- Values start empty and are meant to. See the note below.
Removing an item keeps the ratings already written against it, so last term's cards still read correctly.
Recording them
- Pick a term and a class. You will see one block per student.
- Rate each item by picking a level — the same A–E the subjects use, so the report card carries one key rather than two. Leave an item on Not rated and it is left off the card entirely.
- Add projects with Add project. Each has a title, a Planning or Implementation stage, a score out of 100 and a short comment. Leave the score blank for a project that has been started but not yet scored — the record is kept either way. Removing a project on screen deletes it on save.
- Write a comment on the area in the box under each block. It is about the area as a whole, not about any one item in it.
An area with nothing rated prints nothing. That is what keeps a primary or A-Level card exactly as it was.
Who may write these is the same rule as the class teacher's remark: the class teacher for their own stream, and the Dean of Studies or Head Teacher for any class. A subject teacher cannot — a generic skill is a judgement about the whole child, not about their performance in one subject.
Applying the O-Level curriculum template seeds the five skills the curriculum names. They are yours to edit: a school that reports four of them, or words one differently, changes the list rather than working around it.
The curriculum also names ten values, from the National Ethics and Values Policy 2013. They are deliberately not seeded and not rated: the curriculum framework states that values "are not taught directly in lessons, nor will they be assessed, but they will inform and shape all teaching and learning". A school that prints them anyway is making its own choice, not meeting a requirement.
What appears on the report card
- Project work — a line per project, with title, stage, score and level.
- Generic skills, Games & clubs, Values — one strip each, listing the items that were rated and at what level. Items that were not rated are left off rather than printed blank, and a strip with nothing in it does not print at all.
- A comment under any block you wrote one for.
- In the key at the foot of the card — the score range for each grade.
Four blocks plus a full subject table is more than one A4 side holds. Set Report card length to Two pages under Assessment → Sets if you report all of them — see Report cards.
The certificate result UNEB prints (Result 1 / Result 2) is a decision about a whole UCE candidature, not about a term, so it does not appear on a termly report card.
Where else you see it
- Marksheet on the Results page — CBC score and Identifier columns per student, with the class ranked by competency score, highest first.
- Parent portal — the same columns, average and grade tally, with one card per rated area and the project comments below.