
Ministry of Education Permanent Secretary Kedrace Turyagyenda, UNEB ChairpersonCelestino Obua, Minister of State for Primary Education Joyce Moriku Kaducu, Minister for Education Janet Museveni, Rwampara District
Woman Representative and Education Committee Deputy Chairperson Molly Asiimwe Musiime, UNEB Executive
Director Dan Odongo and Jonam County MP Emmanuel Ongiertho during the release the 2024 PLE results at State
House, Nakasero. PHOTO | DAVID LUBOWA
In the 2024 Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE), the Karamoja Sub-region experienced its poorest performance in four years.
Of 6,808 candidates, only 180 achieved a first grade, equating to approximately 21 per 10,000 learners. This marks a decrease of 54 first-grade achievers compared to 2023. This number also constitutes a small portion of the 84,301 learners who scored a first grade at the national level.
Much like was the case at regional levels, the number of second and third grades increased compared to last year nationally. Karamoja’s persistent challenges—such as high poverty and illiteracy rates—continue to impede educational progress.
A Uneb dataset shows that the majority of Karamoja’s primary learners have posted second grades in the last four years. For instance, the number of pupils who passed in the second grade this year increased by 252 from 3,385 in 2023.
This number had declined from 4,457 registered in 2020.
Mixed bag
The number of the sub-regions first grades, which shot from 375 in 2020 to 401 in 2022 has, however, been declining across the last two years, according to statistics. The third grade has ranged between 1,400 and 1,900 learners from 2020 to 2024. Elsewhere, the failure rate has stagnated at less than 600 learners annually.
Education experts and state actors yesterday unanimously agreed that more action from all stakeholders is required to ensure that some wind is put under Karamoja’s sails. Dr Moriku Kaducu, the junior Education minister, told Saturday Monitor that the government has put in place several interventions, such as the school feeding programme, to keep the learners in school.
“We work with the World Food Programme to give hot meals to the majority of schools in Karamoja so the children can concentrate and perform better. But we need collective stakeholders including the parents,” Minister Kaducu said.
“We are trying to bring in other strategies to improve the performance but we need all of us to speak the same language, most especially the parents because the parental role has really gone to the grassroots, parents are not helping learners at all where everything has been left to the school, teachers and government,” she added.
Mr Hasadu Kirabira, the chairperson of the National Private Education Institutions Association (NPEIA), said the challenges in Karamoja are largely down to demotivated teachers. “Government must increase the remuneration of teachers in this area to attract high-quality teachers in the [sub-]region because the problem does not lie with pupils but basically how they are taught,” he reasoned, adding, “Remember now Uneb assess more on how the child understands the things, which call for more quality teachers.”
Mr Fagil Mande, a senior educationist, said: “The solution can only be helped by inspecting and helping those schools and job training to see that teachers are teaching correct things...We better fund more inspection of schools, which are generally weak, birthing these coaching and other extra lessons.”
Grim outlook
The government and experts unanimously agree that the sub-region, which has faced conflicts in the past years, needs to be a continuous beneficiary of affirmative action to enable its education pace to match that of its counterparts.
The December 2024 National Population and Housing Census (NPHC) final report ranked Karamoja as the sub-region with the lowest literacy rate, standing at 25.4 per cent compared to Kampala Capital City, which topped with 93.9 per cent. More than 600,000 of the sub-region’s 1.4 million population is above 18 years.
The NPHC report further shows that the vast majority of the population is either married or cohabiting. The same report further revealed that the sub-region has an unprecedented number of idle youth aged between 14 and 17 years. These were estimated to constitute 51 per cent compared to other sub-regions.
Only 142,903 pupils of 8.9 million primary school pupils were from Karamoja, according to the report. The situation per the report does not differ when it comes to Early Childhood Education, where only 15,700 pupils out of the 1.7 million nationally are from Karamoja. Minister Kaducu on Friday said parents in the sub-regions nine districts, including Abim, Amudat, Kaabong, Karenga, Kotido, Moroto, Nabilatuk, Nakapiripirit and Napak, must be at the forefront of ensuring that their children are in schools.
“This is a child that needs a free environment at home and needs to be supported to revise to do homework. But if the environment at home does not support them, we don’t expect much. That’s why this time we are really emphasising the parental responsibility,” she said.
On Kirabira’s call to have more teachers motivated, Minister Kaducu said, “Karamoja has a lot of initiative and advocacy as we are trying to advocate for a comprehensive university education. We are looking at having more teachers recruited, motivated and probably...If we have affirmative action, will things change? It is a holistic way of looking at things like the teacher factor, child, parents and the community, but you cannot look at one thing like increasing the teacher’s salary when you have not looked at other factors."