Hundreds fail Islamic exams

The Islam PLE. However, the female pupils performed better than their male counterparts.

About 701 students have failed last year’s Islamic Primary Leaving Examinations (IPLE), registering 23.3 per cent of the total number of candidates who sat for the exams.

This implies that these will not join any Islamic theological institute this year.

Although the number of failures looks smaller compared to the 901 pupils who failed in 2010, the performance was generally poor considering the number of candidates who sat for the exam last year.

Declining grades
According to the 2011 IPLE results released yesterday by the Islamic National Examinations Board, 704 passed with first grades while 770 passed with second grade. This is far below the 819 candidates and 1,042 who passed in the same grade last year respectively.

Another 305 were in third grade while 501 passed with fourth grade.

Sheikh Yahaya Lukwago, the chairman of Uganda Quran Schools Associations (UQSA), said out of the 3,020 pupils who registered for the exams from 111 centres countrywide, 39 did not show up for the exams.
“There was also a total decline in the performance in all subjects as compared to last year. Some pupils registered for the exams but didn’t show up,” Mr Lukwago said.

He blamed the poor performance on schools that force pupils to sit for the exams while still in Primary Six.
“This has led to poor performance when pupils join Senior One because they tend to forget what they studied in P.6,” he said.

UQSA is an umbrella organisation for all Islamic schools in the country teaching theology. It has its own syllabus for the Arabic language and Islamic Theology for primary schools.

According to the results, central region took the lead in performance followed by western, eastern, while northern came last.

Encouraging competition
Unlike the government-owned Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) which does not publish names of the best performing schools and students, Ineb does so to encourage other schools to do better, according to Sheikh Lukwago.

Uneb banned the publishing of best performers in 2006 after the examination body claimed that the criteria breeds unnecessary excitement among schools and candidates, which forces others to indulge in exam malpractice.

assenkabirwa@ug.nationmedia.com