5,600 students fail PTC exams

Kampala. More than 5,600 students have failed last year’s Grade III Teachers Certificate Examinations which was released in Kampala on Friday.

Presenting the 2016 results at the Office of the President, Prof Elly Kantuguka, the Kyambogo University Vice Chancellor, said of the 16,273 students who sat for the exams, 5,625 of the students failed and have been advised to repeat. This means at least three of every 10 of the PTC students failed the exams that is administered by Kyambogo University.

However, the 10,273 students who passed the exams recorded best performance in Local Language Education, Professional Education Studies, Social Studies, Agriculture, Religious Education, Physical Education, and Integrated Production Skills.
Prof Kantuguka reported an improved performance in all the subjects examined with an overall percentage pass of more than 85, except Mathematics Education, which recorded percentage pass of 76 compared to results posted in 2015.

“The overall performance indicates an improvement compared to the previous year, 2015. This was mainly due to an improvement in performance in English Language Education, and Mathematics. We’re optimistic that performance will improve further with the review of the entry requirements which started in 2017,” Prof Kantuguka said.

In 2015, at least 10,612 students sat for the exams but only 2 attained distinction pass compared to 6 in 2016, while another 4,508 (40per cent) got credit passes in 2015 compared to 9,596 (58per cent) in 2016 and 1,459 (13.16 per cent) scoring passes in 2015 compared to only 529 (3.25 per cent) in 2016.
Similarly, 4,406 (39.7per cent) of the students who sat the exams failed in 2015 while 5,628 (34per cent) failed in 2016.

Although 2015 registered the highest percentage of students who failed, the number of students in 2016 increased by 34.7per cent, showing an increase in the number of failures too.
Majority of the worst performing students were from the private colleges, with their poor performance attributed to the many challenges faced, including staffing, resources, and management in the institutions.

Education and Sports minister Janet Museveni, who officiated at the release of the exams, expressed worry about the large number of teachers who are failing the exams.
Ms Museveni said she would lead a team of ministry officials to visit some of the colleges to establish why they continue to pass out teachers with poor grades.

“I note the number of private PTCs has increased and are providing more access to teachers. However, it has been noted that most of these institutions are not doing well due to several challenges. The Ministry of Education will put measures in place to ensure these colleges acquire the required standards to operate as teacher training institutions. We will not tolerate any teacher training institution that does not meet the standards,” Ms Museveni warned.

She also said the ministry would strengthen the monitoring and supervision of both public and private teacher training colleges to provide learning facilities to ensure a conducive teaching and learning environment, improve staffing in the colleges and provide more support to Kyambogo University to enhance its capacity in teacher education and training. Mr James Tweheyo, the secretary general of the Uganda National Association of Teacher’s Union (Unatu), expressed worry, saying the 5,600 failures were a big number.

He demanded for a comprehensive report from the ministry about the high level of failure and how they plan to address the issue.
“The moment you have 34.6 per cent percentage of would-have-been teachers failing and you comfort yourself, then you would not know where these people are moving to, we are in danger. The worst is that those who failed are in private colleges, so there must be checks in the institutions so that by the time the students sit for exams, they would have gone through proper scrutiny,” Mr Tweheyo said.

The best colleges in 2016 were Bundibugyo PTC, Rakai PTC, Bushenyi PTC, Bishop Stuart PTC, Ndegeya PTC, and Canon Apology PTC, which all attained an overall percentage of pass of over 85 per cent.
The worst performers included Busoga PTC, St John the Baptist PTC Ggaba, Nazigo PTCs, Namutamba and Walugogo PTC, which all posted percentage pass of below 40 per cent.

Poor performance
Majority of the worst performing students were from the private colleges, with their poor performance attributed to the many challenges faced, including staffing, resources, and management in the institutions.

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