The Uganda national examination board (UNEB) Executive Secretary Dan Odongo has disclosed one of the reasons why schools under Universal Primary Education (UPE) have continued to perform poorly compared their private counterparts.
While releasing the 2020 Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) results on Friday at State House Entebbe, Odongo said UPE schools have consistently been performing poorly because most teachers in the schools spend much time on their private work than teaching yet in non-UPE schools, teachers spend most of their time engaging pupils.
“Most of the non-UPE candidates are from schools located in urban areas. Studies that have been conducted by UNEB through National Assessment of Progress in Education (NAPE) have always shown that learners in schools located in urban areas achieve higher levels of proficiency than their peers in schools located in rural areas. Reasons for this include the fact that teachers in urban schools tend to spend more time on task, there is a higher level of parental involvement in the learning process, better access to facilities that supplement classroom teaching,” Odongo noted.
He also cited poor feeding in UPE schools plus few or no teaching facilities which have always left UPE pupils half-baked as other reasons for the underperformance.
“Also, limited use of the English language by both UPE teachers and the pupils yet final exams are set in English, which makes it hard for UPE pupils to understand questions clearly during their final examinations.”
Odongo also said that most of the candidates that failed the PLE flat were from UPE schools.
“This Division U (Ungraded) is awarded to candidates who have failed to reach the minimum level of performance that can be awarded at least a Division 4. Such candidates are advised to repeat.”
The 2020 PLE results have showed that out of the 734,788 pupils who sat for the examinations, 74, 875 pupils failed while 659,910 passed. A total of 81,864 passed in First grade, 334,711 in second, 146,142 in third and 97,193 in fourth.
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