Over 400,000 join Senior One

Kampala. The Minister of Education, Ms Jessica Alupo, yesterday reported that a total of 447,125 of last year’s Primary Seven pupils will join secondary and vocational institutions.
According to the minister, schools must admit all students who scored between Division One to Four.
She made the call yesterday during the opening of the national Senior One selection exercise at Kampala International University where she encouraged parents to interest their children in joining vocational institutions in order to get skills necessary in the job market.
“We hope to have admitted 447, 125 at the end of this exercise. We are going to commission 25 more vocational institutions. I want schools to prioritise development skills to empower the youth. I also appeal to parents to encourage their children to join them in oil and gas and plumbing courses to achieve Vision 2040 so that we can transform our economy,” Ms Alupo said.
According to Uganda National Examinations Board statistics, a total of 516,860 out of 585,622 candidates who sat for the exams, passed Primary Leaving Examinations last year after they scored from Divisions One to Four.
A total of 69,735 pupils are likely to miss vacancies due to a shortage of facilities although they are eligible to join Senior One.
Last year, a total of 481,530 students were admitted to Senior One across the country while about 13,309 missed out.
However, the figure is lower than 163,087 who missed admission in 2013 .
At the selection exercise, which ends today, most schools which have been performing well maintained their cut-off points, with several head teachers saying students missed out partly because of last year’s performance, which improved from 88.1 per cent in 2013 to 88.2 per cent.
Also, choices of schools pupils who wish to join affect their admission. For instance, if you opted Gayaza High School as your fourth choice of preference, even if you scored Aggregate 4, you will not be considered as the school first picks candidates who had them as their first choice.
Girls’ points went up to Aggregate 6 from last year’s 7 while boys remained on Aggregate 6.
At King’s College Budo, only girls with Aggregate 5 and boys with Aggregate 4 were admitted, the head teacher, Mr Patrick B. Male, said.

CREAM LEFT OUT
A number of head teachers said many students were left out partly because of the good performance in last year’s PLE but also the poor choices the pupils made when indicating which schools they preferred to be admitted to for secondary education. Mr Charles Kahigiriza, the Ndejje SS head teacher, said it has become more competitive for girls to join his school because many applied and have performed well. “For instance, out of the over 1,000 who applied, we will only admit 140,” he said, adding that, they will admit 100 more because of the available facilities.

Reported by Patience Ahimbisibwe, Al-Mahdi Ssenkabirwa, Shabibah Nakirigya, Joseph Kato, Winnie Tabitha & Beatrice Nakibuuka.