Ministers’ former schools trail in PLE

Kampala. Two out of 23 primary schools that were attended by senior ministers had no learners passing in Division One in the recently released Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE)results, an analysis by Saturday Monitor shows.
One of the schools, Erepi Demonstration School in Yumbe District, is where First Deputy Prime Minister Gen Moses Ali did his elementary education from. Out of the 39 candidates who took the examinations last year at the school, 16 passed in Division Two, another 16 were in Division Three, six were in Division Four, while one candidate failed.

The other school that registered no first grade is Bukitimbo Primary School, which was attended by Presidency minister Esther Mbayo Mbulakubuza. At Bukitimbo, eight of the 25 candidates who sat last year’s PLE failed, representing a failure rate of 32 per cent. Five of the candidates passed in Division Two, six in Division Three and another six were in Division Four.

Kyamate Integrated School in Ntungamo District where President Museveni and his wife Janet Museveni studied, had 10 of its 34 candidates passing in Division One, representing a pass rate in Division One of 29 per cent.
None of the candidates who sat at Kyamate last year failed, and only one passed in Division Four. Nineteen of the students passed in Division Two and Four were in Division Three.

Of all the 23 former ministers’ schools sampled, St Hellen’s Primary School in Mbarara, which was attended by Kampala Affairs minister Beti Kamya, had the highest pass rate in Division One (58 per cent), closely followed by Nyakashura Junior Primary School, which was attended by Attorney General William Byaruhanga.
The analysis targeted schools attended by only Cabinet ministers, including the President and Vice President. We were unable to exhaust the entire Cabinet list because some of the schools, which are shown to have been attended by some Cabinet ministers were not on the list for which exams results were released. This could be because the schools changed names or some no longer exist.

In all the 23 schools attended by Cabinet ministers, 94 candidates out of a total of 1,605 pupils failed PLE while 27 registered candidates did not turn up to take the papers or did insufficient papers to be graded.
Bweranyangi Primary School, which was attended by General Duties minister Karooro Okurut, had the highest number of candidates who failed (29), although it also had the highest number of candidates passing in Division One (60). The school had a total of 131 registered candidates, suggesting that it does not implement the policy pursued by some schools of only registering a few candidates they expect to perform well.

Buhinga Primary School in Fort Portal, the other school apart from Nyakashura School, which Attorney General William Byaruhanga attended, had the highest number of candidates (218) among the 23 schools of former ministers surveyed. Of these, 218, 32 passed in Division One, while only one failed and one did not turn up for the exams.
Majority of the candidates (164) were in second grade, while 17 were in Division Three and another three were in Division Four.

Additional reporting by Felix Basiime, A. Senkabirwa, Isaac Mufumba & Alfred Tumushabe

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