Stop blame games on poor academic show

The release of national examinations brings both jubilations and lamentations. Headlines in the media tell of high fliers and failures basing on gender or subjects.
Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) executive secretary Daniel Odong revealed during the release of the A-Level 2017 results that fewer candidates got two principal passes, the minimum requirement needed for them to join university or tertiary institutions.
Out of the 100,066 candidates who sat UACE examinations in 2017, 34,819 scored at least three principal passes. There was a 5.1 per cent decline posted from 65.8 per cent, who got two principal passes in 2016 to 60.7 per cent in 2017.
The reality that more than 1,000 students failed UACE 2017 exams is one we should face. Highest failures have been registered among candidates under Universal Secondary Education compared to those from private schools.
The blame game, is no doubt, is common as different stakeholders attribute poor performance to different parties or themselves. The State Minister for Higher Education, Dr John Chrysostom Muyingo, blamed the poor performance in science subjects on poor teaching methods. He appealed to schools to go back to the basics and handle the teaching of sciences as required.
According to him, private schools are giving priority to arts subjects and this is affecting interest in sciences. Ironically, the teaching fraternity claims to have been failed by the ministry.
At a time when the ministry is pushing for science education, it is unfortunate that the capacity of teachers is still low.
Plans to train more teachers and to help the existing ones to upgrade have not yielded fruits. In such circumstances, therefore, it is not surprising that performance in sciences remains poor.
Rather than resort to blame games that has become synonymous with Ugandans, all stakeholders should own up and fix the damage. There is another opportunity to change things as the academic year has just begun recently.
It will be a shame to make and read the same comments in media next year. These things are not going to fix themselves, someone needs to stop the lip-service and take a deliberate corrective action. This may require improving the system or weeding out those letting down the system.

The issue: Science subjects
Our view: These things are not going to fix themselves, someone needs to stop the lip-service and take a deliberate corrective action. This may require improving the system or weeding out those letting down the system.