Bravo to P.7 leavers who performed exceptionally well - Part one

Congratulations to Primary Seven leavers who were reported to have performed exceptionally well in their primary school leaving examinations.
However, as educationalists and parents we must have received this wonderful news with reservations.
First there were some results reported to be in thousands which were cancelled by Uganda National Examination Board for irregularities and cheating.
We suspect the cheating was not committed by pupils themselves but by malpractices prevalent in their respective schools.
Another story appeared at the same time that thousands other Primary Seven leavers were unable to do examinations.
Before the schools which are reported to have done exceptionally well and the Ministry of Education open champagne bottles in jubilation, all Ugandans need to first reflect on what has been happening to our former educational high standards and values that used to make us proud among the nations of the world.
For the last 40 or so years, these standards have rapidly descended to the bottom heap of nations which perform badly in education.
I will start with personal experience of several members of my own family. A decade or so ago, a nephew of mine for whom I paid school fees and supported in other areas of his education scored distinctions in all subjects in the Primary Seven leaving examinations.
I easily secured a place for him at a well-known school in Uganda. After one term, the headmaster sent him down for poor performance with a report addressed to me that he was semi-illiterate and did not understand English and what the teachers or other pupils were saying in that school, I was disappointed.
When he returned home, I questioned him as to why, having got distinctions in Primary Seven, he performed badly in Senior One.
He confessed that during the Primary Seven leaving examinations teachers had written the answers beforehand and handed to all the examinees a copy each and that is why they performed exceptionally well.
Ironically, some of his fellow pupils failed because they did not have the common sense to copy the teachers’ handwriting of the circulated answers.
The second example is of a grandniece for whom I was also supporting in primary school under the UPE scheme.
One day she brought me a report in which she had performed fairly well in other subjects but in the English language she had only scored 39 per cent. Against her marks, the class teacher had written excellent as a comment against that result. I was surprised because 39 per cent in any good school is a failure.
I therefore contacted the teacher and commented that he had made a mistake in the report regarding his comment about the 39 marks.
He vehemently protested that I had wrongly accused him of making a mistake and that his classification was correct.
I asked him why he thought it was correct, his answer amazed me. He said: “Your niece performed exceedingly well because she was the first among more than 50 pupils who did that English test in the class. Words for further exchange failed me and we ended the interaction.
Tragically, matters are much worse in the whole of our education system. Late last year a fact finding mission was established to investigate and report on the state of our education.
Their report was headlined in the media with screaming headlines “80 per cent of Ugandan teachers in primary schools cannot write English nor do arithmetic”.
The question that every Ugandan is asking now is how did our pupils who were taught by these illiterate and ignorant teachers manage to perform exceptionally well in the PLE whose results have been published this month.
Surely, just as you cannot get water out of a stone, it would be a miracle that you can get excellent examination results from a pupil who was taught by ignorant or semi-illiterate teachers.
Moreover, these are the same pupils who will go to our secondary schools, universities and other tertiary institutions.
How can we expect the reported performing stars of today’s PLE to perform miraculously in universities and tertiary institutions?
Of course, they will not. In part two, we shall examine and discuss education beyond primary schools.

Prof Kanyeihamba is a retired Supreme Court judge. [email protected]