Boys beat girls in PLE

Results. The girls registered a fair performance in divisions three and four while the boys led by a slight margin in divisions one and two.

The 2012 Primary Leaving Examination results released yesterday show that boys performed better than girls overall, with English being the best done subject.
Out of the 564,060 candidates, who registered for the examinations, 49.5 per cent (279,413) were girls, while 50.5 per cent (284,647) were boys.
Of these, however, 23,807 females were in Division One (4.4 per cent) and 35,347 were boys.

The Minister of Education, Ms Jessica Alupo, said the increasing female enrolment was a major step towards empowerment of girls and gender equality.

“I note with satisfaction that girls performed fairly well. They are better in divisions 3 and 4, while in divisions 1 and 2, the margins are not alarming. This is encouraging in the efforts to promote education of the girl child,” Ms Alupo said in statement.

She added: “This means we have achieved near gender equality and access to basic formal education. The gender ratio is an indication that we have almost achieved gender equality at national level.”

The government introduced an affirmative 1.5 points for girls as they join university to increase the number of females accessing to education,
Ms Betty Amongi, the Uganda Women’s Parliamentary Association, said girls’ performance declined because few complete school.

Ms Amongi said the workload given to girls in low income families is still much higher compared to that in well to do families.

“You find that in poor families girls are still subjected to house work before they go to school and sometimes they reach class when they are tired,” she said.

She added: “We need to work hard to ensure that the barriers in the socialisation process are minimised, ensure that there are special learning mechanisms in schools to enable girls to study in complex situations.”

akiyaga@ug.nationmedia.com