The Minister of Education and Sports Janet Kataha Museveni has ordered for the immediate trial of all individuals who were involved in Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) malpractice last year.
The minister, who is also the First Lady, says the act does not only discredit Uganda’s education system but also ruins the country’s image and sows bad seeds in generations of learners to come.
She made the call yesterday, while presiding over the release of the 2023 PLE results at State House, Nakasero in Kampala.
The First Lady also condemned the promotion of pupils to upper classes even when the teachers felt they were unfit for such levels.
She was dismayed by the 1.6% of candidates who did not turn up to do the examination, although they were registered.
The PLE results indicate that integrated science was the best-performed subject (91%) followed by English language (89.5%) and social studies (88%).
According to UNEB secretary Dan Odongo, boys were better than girls in SST, Mathematics, and Science, while the girls beat the boys in English.
A total of 648,662 candidates passed in four different grades in the 2023 Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) that was held between November 8 and November 9 last year.
Of these, 86,582 (11.8%) of candidates passed in Division one, 336,507 candidates in Division two, 156,290 in Division three, while 69283 passed in Division (4).
A total of 88,269 failed while 12,323 did not sit for the exams.
Meanwhile, Head teachers decry low teacher to learner ratio as PLE performances decline compared to last year.
Speaking to our reporter, Fredric Tumuhirwe, the head teacher at Uganda martyrs primary school Mbarara said the government’s failure to recruit enough teachers may be one of reasons for poor performances in some schools.
According to Tumuhirwe, the government sometimes doesn’t immediately replace the retired teachers causing a teaching gap and low teacher to learner ratio.
Notably last year, the ministry of finance suspended recruitment of new government workers which has left many schools grappling with staffing gaps
