Uneb notes slight improvement

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Education Minister Jessica Alupo receives the PLE results from UNEB chairman Fagil Mandy yesterday. PHOTO BY ISAAC KASAMANI.  

By Al-mahdi Ssenkabirwa

Posted  Tuesday, January 22  2013 at  02:00

 

The Ministry of Education yesterday released the 2012 Primary Leaving Examination results, indicating a slight improvement in performance compared to 2011.
There was a two per cent improvement.

However, Uneb, the national examiner, did not give figures of candidates under free primary education, who passed despite them constituting 81.9 per cent of the total number of candidates who sat the exams.

This could create suspicion that the government deliberately conceals information regarding performance of UPE beneficiaries, who are widely believed to perform poorer than their counterparts in private or non-UPE schools.

English best performed
“That is very difficult to compute and it will require us to look at each UPE school and get their performance, which we cannot do now,” said Mr Matthew Bukenya, the Uneb executive secretary.
The 2012 candidates, were the 15th batch of pupils who sat under the UPE programme.

English was the best performed subject, followed by Social Studies and Religious Education. Integrated Science, which was the best done subject in 2011, was the worst in 2012 after Mathematics, which has been performed poorly the past five years.

“The reports from chief examiners indicated that generally, the quality of candidates’ work has improved, compared to that of the previous years,” Mr Bukenya said.

He also pointed out that the improvement in Division One saw the pass rate rise to 10.9 per cent, compared to 9.6 per cent in 2011. Division One pass rate was 8.6 per cent (42,195) in 2010.

There were 11,171 centres across the country, with 8,774 scouts deployed to oversee the smooth running of the exam.

Candidates who scored between Divisions one to four are deemed to have passed and can enrol for any post-primary examination conducted by Uneb .
Urban areas are still performing better than rural areas, according to Uneb statistics.

A total of 565,663 pupils registered to sit PLE last year, up from 535,933 in 2011 but only 543,071 showed up for the exams, indicating that 20,989 (3.7 per cent) were absent .

Education Minister Jessica Alupo, who released the exams at Statistics House, Kampala, expressed concern over perennial absenteeism at PLE, saying it defeats the government‘s free education policy.
“It is disturbing for government to sponsor a child from P.1 only to drop out at the last minute in P.7,” she said.
Uneb chairman Fagil Mandy warned school heads against selling exam results to parents, saying the practice had reached alarming levels, particularly in up-country schools.

At Statistics House conference hall in Kampala where results were released, ministry officials battled an enthusiastic crowd of parents and school head teachers, anxious to see how their pupils performed in the 2012 PLE.

The large turn-up did not help as ministry officials insisted: “Go away please. We keep telling you results are not given from here. You will find them tomorrow [today at Uneb]. ”

Ms Alupo also revealed that selection for Senior One, which had earlier been set for January 30, would be conducted on January 31 and February 1 at Wonder World Amusement Park –Kansanga, Kampala, while Senior One students will report for the first term on February 18.

assenkabirwa@ug.nationmedia.com

Accessed from the daily monitor on 22/01/2013:http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Uneb-notes-slight-improvement/-/688334/1671644/-/587j6ez/-/index.html