Kabojja parents petition Uneb over results

Kampala- Parents of Kabojja Junior, who were dissatisfied with their children’s Primary Leaving Examination results released last week, have petitioned Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) to remark their scripts to be sure that the marks they attained were the true results.

Mr Dan Odongo, the Uneb executive secretary, yesterday confirmed that they had received a petition from Kabojja but hadn’t looked at the contents of the petition.

Although Mr Odongo said they encourage individual schools to alert them in case they notice any irregularity, he dismissed allegations that the examining body was biased while marking city schools, saying the examiners are drawn from across the country.

Mr Odongo asked the public to stop thinking that children who have attended rural schools are daft but are rather disadvantaged because they lack basic facilities.

“Intelligence is not a monopoly of children who live in urban areas. Stupidity is not a property of children in rural setting. It is as if children in rural areas are completely daft, they cannot be taught and children in urban areas are genius. It is just location. The urban location gives an advantage because there are more facilities but the location doesn’t increase their natural intelligence,” Mr Odongo said.

He said they use a conveyer belt system while marking where an individual script is looked at by at least five examiners and each of the groups is over seen by a chief examiner who ensures that the marking scheme is followed.

In addition, the examiners are practicing teachers who are picked around the country, including Kampala.

“This issue that Uneb undermarks certain schools in Kampala is not a new claim. It doesn’t make sense. What business would Uneb have undermarking some schools in some parts of the country? We have one marking scheme which is employed by all examiners,” Mr Odongo said in an interview.

He added: “Uneb staff are parents with children who go to these schools in Kampala. How would in their situation deliberately reduce marks where their children are being taken?”

Mr Richard Okiror, the school head teacher, yesterday said the parents petitioned Uneb because they didn’t believe in their children’s performance.
“We have never fallen that low in the last 20 years,” Mr Okiror said.

Performance
A scrutiny of the 2018 PLE results shows that Kabojja had 194 of its candidates score Division One while the rest came in Division Two. There was no candidate with aggregate 4. Three of their pupils scored aggregate 5 while the majority ranged between aggregates eight and 12.

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