Budaka District Education Officer to investigate headteachers as 864 fail PLE

Budaka District Education officer has started investigating some of its headteachers as 864, pupils who sat for PLE 2020 failed to make it to senior one.

This failure rate has left education officials with no tangible action other than the usual blame game.

In 2020, 4,930 candidates were registered to sit for PLE in 63 examination sitting centers across the district.

Mr. Paul Higenyi the District Education Officer said they are investigating headteachers on various counts while attributing poor performance to parent’s failure to provide lunch to the learners and the government's automatic promotional system.

Higenyi said the department is investigating a dubious lucrative business where some headteachers secretly registered P5 pupils to sit for PLE.

‘’Some of the parents are calling me revealing how their P5 pupils excelled in PLE an indication that headteachers are doing it secretly without our notice and this could have contributed to the high rate of failures’’ he said

Also under investigation according to Higenyi, are cases of headteachers of government schools who connived with owners of private schools to screen their weak candidates and later register them under UPE schools after extorting money from parents.

This comes at a time when government-aided primary schools in the district have continued to register poor results compared to private schools.

In 2020, the district registered 4,930 candidates in PLE. Of these, only 216 were in Division One, 1,746 were in Division Two while Division three had 1,156. A total of 907 were in Division 4 and 864 were in Division U. Absentee were 41.

Mr. Higenyi stated that there was an increase of candidates who registered from 4,667 in 2019 to 4,930 in 2020.

He said despite covid 19 interferences there was an increase in pass rates for Division 1 from 163 candidates in 2019 to 216 candidates in 2020.

It has also been established that UNEB withheld results of 27 candidates of Lupada Primary school over suspected exam malpractice.

He named the best schools in the district as Namirembe day and boarding primary (41) cornerstone primary (34) Joy Blessed primary (32), Budaka Integrated (16), Budaka FHP (9) Nyanza primary, Namengo Girls (5) as the best schools.

The worst-performing schools, with the highest number of failures having failed to produce a first grade for the last 10 years include, Bugoola p/s school (63), Katira p/s, (63), Butove p/s (46), Namuyago p/s (42),Kaderuna p/s 41,Kodiri p/s 39, Gadumire p/s (35), Mivule p/s(32) Kakule p/s (30), and Kachomo p/s (29)

District Inspector of schools Gerald Kiire said political interference has contributed to the poor performance.

While Secretary for education Mr. George Mukamba blamed unregulated transfers of teachers and negative attitudes of some parents towards education.