83,000 miss admission to S5

Figures from the Ministry of Education show that out of the 248,513 candidates eligible to join Senior Five, only 165,499 gained admission.

Kampala

As thousands of Senior Four leavers continue to mourn over failure to gain access to their first choice schools for Senior Five, a total of 83,014 have failed to gain any admission this year, the Daily Monitor has learnt.

According to figures from the Ministry of Education Selection Committee, out of the 248,513 candidates eligible to join Senior Five, only 165,499 gained admission. This means that at least 83,014 students will not be admitted, despite having garnered the required aggregate for admission. The rest will have to contend with finding places in private schools which did not participate in the selection exercise that ended last week. However, the figure is lower than 152,864 who missed admission last year. A total of 154,650 were absorbed in the 1,661 government and private schools, slightly more than 101,160 who were admitted last year.

A total of 637 government-aided schools, which run the free Universal Post O-Level Education and Training programme (Upolet) across the country, will admit 60,800 students this year compared to 41,503 they absorbed last year.

Government vs private schools
Privately-owned schools, which implement the Upolet programme, will admit another 19,980 students and another 21,870 will join schools that are supported by the government, for example Gayaza High School, but which do not operate the Upolet programme. Another 2,730 joined the 53 vocational institutions while 8,119 were absorbed in 45 primary teachers colleges.

Assistant Commissioner for Secondary Education Francis Agula yesterday advised students who might face difficulties in getting placements to contact the ministry, saying many private schools which did not take part in the selection exercise will absorb them.

“I advise those who fail to get admission to always contact us. Vacancies are there in many of the mushrooming private schools and I am confident that they will absorb all of them,” he said.
He said due to a decline in performance in last year’s UCE exams, government deliberately lowered cut-off points to enable every candidate who passed have a chance of furthering his/her education.

Mr Agula advised parents whose children are joining Senior Five this year to use the Short Message Service method introduced by government to know schools where they were admitted. Senior Five students are expected to report on March 4.

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