400 top PLE candidates in Karamoja drop out every year

Authorities estimate that at least 400 best Primary Seven candidates fail to join secondary school each year in the Karamoja sub-region.

 Most of them drop out due to several challenges, including school fees.

At Lolet-Ekia Community School in Nadunget Sub County, 16 kilometres west of Moroto Town, one out of 10 candidates who scored second grade in last year’s Primary Leaving Examinations joined Senior One. This particular learner managed to transition to secondary school after securing an Irish Aid scholarship.

 Mark Longora, 14, despite emerging the best in Lolet –Ekia Community School with Aggregate  13 in last year’s Primary Leaving Examinations, failed to join secondary school because his guardians said they could not afford school fees. Longoria lost his parents at the age of 3.

 Longora told the Daily Monitor last Thursday that he sought the Irish Aid Scholarship but was unsuccessful.

He said when the successful list of pupils for the scholarship was announced on the local FM radio stations, “I repeatedly kept tuning in for three days in the hope that my name would be read but it wasn’t.”

He is contemplating repeating Primary Seven, with the hope of getting better grades so that he has a better chance of securing the Irish Aid scholarship.

 “But I may not be able to sit the PLE this year, my uncle who lost his wife to a mysterious disease has failed to pay the Shs15,000 needed for my registration. I have now opted to look after the children of my uncle who are very young,” Longoria said.

Adding: “I need an education, maybe, I will become the light for the backward children in the Manyattas and a breadwinner to the children of my only uncle.”

 His head teacher, Mr Robert Arou Okiror, wondered why he did not get the scholarship, saying having been the best in the school and an orphan,  Longora should have been considered.

 “I am hard up as his head teacher, if I had the money I would help this little boy register to have his dream of being at school,” he said.

Adding: “Already, I am trying to handle another situation that has seen my former pupil here, Peter Abura, arrested in connection with a raid that happened a few days ago in Bokora County. Here is a boy whose elder brothers raided the Bokora, they drove the stolen livestock and handed them to the boy, he is being detained, and the real culprits are at large.”

 He said if solutions for such pupils are not found, they are easily swayed into crime because they see little sense in being submissive in an environment that has failed them.

Sarah Namullen, 17 ,  a resident of Ngolerite Sub-county, Napak District,  despite scoring Aggregate 13 in Primary Seven last year at Kangole Girls’ Primary School,   has not transitioned to secondary. She has since opted to work as a waitress at a restaurant in Moroto Town.

 “I applied for the Irish Aid scholarship but because of the competition among fellow desperate children,my name was not listed among the beneficiaries,” she said.

 Namullen, the last born in the family of 12, said she wants to return to Napak to stay with her mother.

“But I cannot go now because I am the breadwinner for two of my siblings,” she said.

Mr Samuel Abong, the headteacher of Atedeoi Primary School in Lotisan Sub-county, said many children in Karamoja drop out after PLE due to financial constraints.

 The Moroto District Education Officer, Mr Samuel Oputa, however, said some people in Karamoja don’t cherish education; they send boys to look after animals and see girls as a source of dowry, which makes transitioning to secondary school difficult.

 “Even homes with livestock cherish them for marriages, sacrifices, and appeasing friends,” Mr Oputa said, adding that more than 400 children who excel fail to make it to secondary.

He said the only available scholarship by the Irish Aid is limited to three pupils per sub-county across  Karamoja.