UPE needs urgent attention

What you need to know:

  • Lastly, when the Christmas holidays come in, Kampala is always clear of traffic jam, noise and many cars are always seen on all highways leading out of Kampala.
  • This is an expression that we always go back to our roots for celebration. So let us not only celebrate Christmas with our people back there but also academic excellence after we have put in efforts to rejuvenate their forgotten glory.

The indifference exhibited by the central government in the way they look at UPE beneficiaries leaves a lot to be desired. The continued meagre resources allocated to the UPE programme and lack of supervision to what goes on in UPE schools will not deliver desirable results.

In reference to the PLE results released on January 12 by the minister of Education Janet Museveni, they showed that 72 per cent were from UPE schools.

Twenty eight per cent was from private schools yet it was the 28 per cent that constituted 80 per cent of those who passed highly. Does this mean that its a deliberate ploy to see the vast majority of Ugandan pupils fail? Can someone manufacture a solution to this mischief if it’s not deliberate?

As a country we need to look at this as a serious national concern and we look for solutions. It cannot be normal for the minority to perform better than the majority. Only if we say that the pupils have to think for themselves not we who are in the elite part of our country. We can only afford to burry our heads in the sand and live with this reality that surfaces every beginning of the year.

Many of us, who are in the academia, private sector, public sector or even political elite, either have villages or are from these villages that constitute most failures in these examinations every year. Some of us even studied from these villages, which we have since abandoned to fate.

Many elites from these villages have since built around Kampala or rented around Kampala and take their children to these ‘artificial’ good schools we have created around town.

They are artificial in a sense that they have a classroom where they pump learners with only academics. We have forgotten home as if we will never go back.

If the government cannot prevail over the situation, citizens have to wake up to the occasion. Even looking at our politicians reigning around Kampala, there are very few, if any, who hail from Kampala.

This shows that the villages have to be secured as they hold the future. The different technocrats in many government departments are villagers. Wake up and save your replacements once you are gone. Even our presidents, who are nine in number, it is only two: Binaisa and Yusuf Lule that you can relate to Kampala, the rest are villagers.

This shows the magnitude of danger our country is likely to fall into once our villages are not catered for as far as education is concerned.

Lastly, when the Christmas holidays come in, Kampala is always clear of traffic jam, noise and many cars are always seen on all highways leading out of Kampala.

This is an expression that we always go back to our roots for celebration. So let us not only celebrate Christmas with our people back there but also academic excellence after we have put in efforts to rejuvenate their forgotten glory.

Disan Tweheyo