Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) has today released this year’s Support Files for Subsidiary ICT practical papers S850/2 and S850/3, and uploaded them to the schools UNEB portal. Unlike last year where the supports files were uploaded to the public portal where anyone could download, this year the support files have been protected from the public and require someone to login first in order to access the files.
To download the files, school administrators / staff have to login at https://ereg.uneb.ac.ug/login.
Dont have or forgot password?
If you password is not working or if you forgot it, please click reset link above and:
- Ensure to provide your center number
- Provide the phone number and email address registered for your center (Headmaster’s phone number or other contact number provided)
- Remember, PASSWORD IS CASE SENSITIVE. If your password has both uppercase and lowercase or lowercase only or uppercase only, make sure to enter as such.
What are Support Files?
Support Files’ are specimen files that are provided to students in softcopy for use during the computer practical examinations. The support files may include named word documents, spreadsheet files, text files, image files, etc., and are usually referred to in the question paper by their file names and file extensions.
A candidate may be requested to open or load a given file from the support files folder and do certain tasks with it such as save as, copy and paste, format, insert table, image etc. All the candidates are supposed to do is to ensure that they can locate the required support file and follow the instructions on the question paper.
Advantages of Support Files
Challenges not withstanding, usage of support files have several advantages. They save the time the candidates would spend on typing all the text, so candidates can do more advanced tasks instead of typing everything. Support Files help the examiners to test advanced features like table of contents, importing external data, etc which would be impossible to test without the support Files.
Support files can also contain media like images which can be used in applications like PowerPoint or Publisher, since instead of thee olden clip art – since some packages dont have clip art anymore.
Release of support files delayed this year
This is going to be the third time support files are to be used during UNEB Subsidiary ICT Practical examinations since their introduction in 2016.
The release of the support files has substatially delayed as compared to last year and 2016 when they were released one week before the exam date as stipulated on the 27th June 2016 UNEB circular Ref TD/GEN/1.
They have been released today 23rd Nov 2018, just 3 days to the exam date.
Paper Two and Paper Three 2018 Subsidiary ICT Examinations are going to be done on Tuesday 27th November and Wednesday 28th November 2018 respectively as indicated on the 2018 UNEB 2018 examinations timetable .
Over the last few 4 days since Tuesday, many ICT teachers through their chat groups have been impatietly waiting and bothered about the delay. Many have big labs there it takes time to test and load the files to all desktops in the computer labs. Others come from places without 3G internet connectivity and have to travel to the next town with an internet cafe, download the files burn them on Master CDs and them take them to thier schools. This explains the need for UNEB to release the files in time.
Challenges to access of UNEB support files in 2016 and 2017?
In 2016 (the first time) year, the support files were restricted – downloading them was only accessible by school administrators and after logging in to the UNEB eReg schools web portal, whose login credentials are officially sent to registered center head masters.
However, many schools don’t have examination centers and so they could not get the login credentials. Additionally, some center headmasters lost the passwords while others found difficultly in logging in to their schools portals due to computer literacy / ICT challenges.
Many ICT Teachers and Computer Laboratory attendants found challenges accessing the support files in time, yet they are meant to get the support files 1 week to the examination date, in order to test and set them up on to the computer desktops in the laboratory as per the UNEB Guidelines.
The other challenge faced by the teachers was the format in which the support files were provided. The 2016 support files were zipped in as .rar archives which can can not open on windows operating system without installing a third party archive software such as WinRAR.
In 2017, UNEB simply zipped the files into .zip archives which can be opened easily on Windows even without need for installing additional software.
Unfortunately, this year, UNEB has conce again uploaded the files in .rar archives!
NB: We have not availed these support files for download from this site because UNEB released them privately to registered centers, so we can not make them public to maintain confidentiality and prevent prior access to students as per the UNEB guidelines.
What are the UNEB Guidelines for Usage of Support Files?
According to a 27th June 2016 UNEB Circular on Usage of Support Files, the following were stated as the guidelines:
- Support Files shall be uploaded on the UNEB portal one week before the practical examination.
- The uploaded files shall be in a folder that reflects the current year e.g. “UNEB Support Files 2016”
- The schools should download the files on a CD and test them to find out if they are running and opening.
- The computers in the laboratory should be checked and cleaned.
- The computer teachers should then put the Support Files on the Computer Desktops in the Computer Laboratory.
- Candidates should not access the laboratory after the Support Files have been put on the Desktops until the time of the practical examination.
- After each shift and before the next shift of the examination, the Computer teacher should be allowed in the laboratory to make sure each Desktop has only the original Support Files
Teachers warned against predicting questions for candidates basing on the support files
During a recent ICT Teachers retooling workshop, it was noted that some teachers try to predict / guess possible questions to be set basing on the support files. However, the teachers were made to realize that it is actually dangerous to ‘spot’ or ‘guess’ questions for the candidates. There is very little that someone can do with the support files alone without the actual question papers, different unpredictable questions can be asked on the same support files.
Teachers are cautioned against giving hints to students on the support files to be used because this confuses the students the more. Some panicky students will for example do a task such as calculating the sum of numbers in a spreadsheet as predicted by their teacher even when there is no question on the question paper to that effect. Additionally, as per the UNEB guidelines, students should not have prior knowledge of the support files and a teacher who violates this guideline commits examination malpractice.
