130,000 miss S5 admission

At least 137,104 students have missed direct admission into government-aided schools. According to the Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) records, 261,438 students passed last year’s O-Level exams out of 289,012 who sat for the papers.

Speaking at the closure of the two-day selection exercise in Kampala, Mr Francis Agula, the commissioner Secondary Education, said government can only admit 124,334 students in its 1,147 institutions, including secondary schools to implement free A-Level, non-free A- Level, primary teachers college and business, technical vocational institutions that took part in the exercise.

This year’s figure is higher than the 83,014 who missed admission last year. Mr Agula allayed the fears of those who missed out, saying they will be absorbed in schools which didn’t take part in the selection exercise.

“There are at least 500 private schools implementing free A-Level education that have not participated this time. There are also another five private primary teachers colleges and 35 vocational institutes and I’m confident that they will absorb all of them,” he said.

Senior Five students are expected to report to school on March 17.
Mr Agula advised parents whose children are joining Senior Five this year to use the Short Message Service method introduced by the government to know which schools they were admitted to. A UCE leaver can type the word admission, leave space, fill in the index number and send the message to 6600 to give an instant feedback.

Complied by Al-Mahdi Ssenkabirwa, Julius Ocungi &Martin Odong