Uneb, Education ministry serve ulcers to anxious city parents

Last week, the Minister of Education, Janet K. Museveni, released results of the 2018 Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE). A total of 650,000 candidates attempted the exams and about 10 per cent scored first grade. A plurality of students scored second grade (40 per cent) meaning for the first time, 50 per cent of the students scored at least a second grade.
Wakiso and Kampala continued to dominate PLE as is the case with other national exams eating up 20,000 of the 60,000 first grades. Wakiso took the lion’s share with 12,000 first grades and Kampala which covers a fraction of Wakiso’s territory followed a distant second with 8,000 first grades.

Performance among different districts improved. Tiny Kalangala District with just 300 candidates, for example, scored 89 first grades, a record improvement of nearly eight-fold in the last seven years. Mbarara District did not do so well, with 294 first grades. Unlike the yesteryears, no district failed to get a single first grade.
The headache and stern language is coming from ‘first world’ schools who have nearly ‘rejected’ the results complaining that the ‘computer’ delivered the wrong results, undermarking, etc. This affected more specific schools than districts as the traditional players retained first and second position.

Greenhill, a behemoth on the outskirts of town, angry with a drop in performance, wrote a press statement that bordered on arrogance almost holding Uneb at ransom. It is difficult to think this was the same school founded by one of the national legends and trailblasers in education in Uganda, the late Gladys Nsibirwa Wambuzi, one of the first Ugandans to specialise in primary school education in the 1950s. The late Wambuzi, a Maths teacher in her own right, was never one for wining.

There is possibly a national security aspect to exams. Since 1996 when Uganda adopted UPE, the subject of poor performance has baffled government, policy makers, parents and local governments. First in spite of huge investments, performance per capita has been low. Local governments which manage schools construction, etc, are funnels for funds disappearing.
Payroll, the largest single item in the Ministry of Education’s budget, is bloated. Recruitment by the Education Service Commission has an official and unofficial process. Many government schools have far more payroll than head count.

The topic of massive failures and “randomised” marking schemes is popular. The story goes that if one national marking scheme were used, the disparity between urban and rural schools would cause street riots. However, actual evidence to support this proposition is very thin. In selected subjects at A-Level, which attract much fewer students like Geography, Biology, the distribution of good grades controlling for prior performance is more uniform. In fact, the decline in block performance has chipped away the dominance of the traditional old schools or the top 300 which are competing with international curriculum students for both A+ students and well-heeled parents. Well-heeled parents support a more generous curriculum and learning-oriented environment which standard fare government schools cannot.

The liberalisation of education in Uganda has had other effects. Children do not feel they should sit with their feet immersed in cold water all night long to cram narratives or try out impossible solutions in the hard sciences. Very soon, they will reject dissecting live animals in preference for using their smart phones to diagnose illnesses or malignant conditions. In fact, precision technology has already ended the old surgical methods where a wide incision had to be cut up and sewn up. Education has attracted record investment from the private sector. In the private sector, you either eat up others or you are eaten up.

Upcountry government schools are facing a similar problem of falling enrollment. Local politics requires that each new district council chairperson or chief administrative officers has to ‘build’ their own schools to feather their retirement. Every new district prioritises new schools. So for you to be heard, whether you are Greenhill or Kasokoso, you must scream if Uneb is messing up with your lunch money.

Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-at-Law and an Advocate. [email protected]