By Leonard Kamugisha Akida,
KAMPALA
Opposition political parties and education experts have expressed concerns about the high numbers of students failing in national examinations.
Last week on Thursday, the national examinations body – UNEB revealed that a total of 88,269 failed in PLE exams much higher than the total number of learners who passed in Division One. The board further reported a total number of 12,323 absentee candidates something that is alarming regarding the future of Ugandan children.
Although the board boasts of a better general performance and a drop in the the number of the absentees, opposition parties such as the Democratic Party (DP) and FDC say there is a need to investigate the cause of absenteeism and examination failure especially in public schools.
Ismail Kiirya, the President of the Uganda Young Democrats (UYD) who also doubles as the acting spokesperson of DP said the majority of best schools are situated in urban cities and municipalities and are majorly private schools wondering why government schools are poorly performing.
“Government should work on it’s schools because it’s the worst performing schools in Uganda, not every body can take a kid to a private school […] Government has totally disregarded it’s schools and and it’s the schools working on themselves,” said Kiirya
He blamed the poor performance in public schools on automatic promotions of learners and inadequate funding by the government.
On the other hand, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) has tasked government to establish an independent authority to promote technical and Vocational education and skilling in lower primary, secondary and higher institutions of learning one way of equipping learners with relevant skills.
“They will have capacity if they are skilled to do something so that we don’t lose them because where are you going to put these over 88,000 pupils now? So we must do something as Ugandans to skill these people. I think we should start an authority,” said Kikonyogo, FDC spokesperson.
