Candidates Weakness

The observed weaknesses of the candidates this year include:

• wrong spelling of biological names and terms;
• non-adherence to rubrics e.g. by answering all the questions including those not for their country;
• poor performance in questions relating to ecology and microorganisms;
• inability to express themselves vividly in writing answers to essay questions;
• inability to explain how soil water gets to the leaves of a plant in question 1(a);
• inability to describe the role of the pancreatic juice in the digestion of carbohydrates and proteins in mammals in question 2(b).

The following remedies were proffered to overcome these weaknesses:

• - candidates should endeavour to cover all the aspects of the syllabus before taking the examination;
• candidates should improve on their written English;
• candidates should read and understand a question properly before attempting it;
• candidates should study past questions and Chief Examiner’s Report;
• candidates should learn the correct spelling of names of microorganisms;
• the general principles and terms used in Biology should be studied with practical examples.