Pupils fail primary Islam exams

The high failure rate is blamed on the change in the setting of the exams.

Hundreds of pupils have for the second year in row continued to fail Islamic Primary Leaving Examinations (IPLE), which raises disturbing questions about the future of teaching and learning of Islamic theology in schools.

Of the 2,450 candidates who sat the exams last year, only 546 passed in grade one (22.3 per cent) and a total of 286 failed the exams, registering 11.6 per cent .This implies that these will not join any Islamic theological Institute this year.

Although the number of failures looks smaller compared to 701 pupils who failed in 2011, the performance was generally poor considering the number of candidates who sat for the exams.

According to the 2012 IPLE results released in Kampala yesterday by the Islamic National Examinations Board, 690 passed with second grade while 448 and 455 passed with third and fourth grade respectively.

This is far below the 770 candidates who passed in the same grade in 2011 and 1,045 who were in third grade and 510 in fourth grade respectively.

Setting changed
Sheik Yahaya Lukwago, the chairman Uganda Quran Schools Associations (UQSA), said the poor performance was partly due to change in the setting of exams, which was communicated to candidates early so that they read widely but a few took heed.

“It really hurts to fail an exam but those who failed we encourage them to read hard and try again this year,” he said.

Jinja Municipality Mayor Baswale Kezaala is among candidates who excelled after scoring 21 aggregates.

“We congratulate him upon attaining that achievement and we ask other mature people to enrol and study their religion,” he added.

assenkabirwa@ug.nationmedia.com