Over 800 schools fail to get 1st grade

By In2EastAfrica - Fri Feb 11, 12:13 am

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Uganda National Examinations Board

A total of 806 secondary schools across the country failed to produce a first-grade student in last year’s Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) exams.

This means that almost 31.5% of the 2,551 centres which conducted the O’level exams did not get any student in Division One.

An analysis of the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) results released on Tuesday also indicates that 471 schools got only one first grade, while 293 schools produced two first grades.

Meanwhile, the New Vision ranked the 600 worst performing schools basing on the percentage of students who got Division 9, and discovered that most are privately owned and based upcountry.

Over 30% of the students in such schools got Division 9. According to UNEB standards, a student who gets Division 9 is considered a failure and is not given a certificate.

Iganga district has the highest number of worst schools (29), followed by Kasese which has 25, Wakiso and Kabale which have 19 each. Other districts weree Sironko, Masaka, Tororo, Arua and Jinja.

Kakuka Hill SS in Bundibugyo district was the worst school after 21 (58.3%) of its 36 students got Division 9. It was followed by Maracha Hall, a UNEB centre in Maracha district, whose 74 (49.7%) of the 149 candidates failed.

Others included Negrini Memorial in Zombo district, Nkono Memorial in Kaliro, Paya SS in Tororo and Bushika SS in Bududa, which had over 30% of their students in Division 9.

In terms of fewer first grades, Wakiso and Kampala had the highest number of schools getting between zero and two first grades despite the districts being consistently the best in UNEB exams. Over 45 schools in Wakiso got no first grades, while in Kampala they were 39.

This was attributed to the many private schools cropping up in both districts each year. Statistics show that about 100 schools open in Kampala and Wakiso every year.

Such schools have poor or no facilities like laboratories to enable students pass yet the ministry’s inspection unit lacks capacity to reach every school.

Nationally, UNEB reported that 16,740 out of 260,080 candidates got Division 9. This translates into a 6.4% failure compared to 4.3% in 2009.

UNEB could not explain precisely what caused the increase in failures but experts cited the unprecedented increase in the number of candidates sitting UCE of 21% from that of 2009, compared to the usual annual increase of about 7%.

The sharp increase in candidates was because students under the free secondary education (USE) scheme were sitting the O’level exams for the first time last year. A total of 101,467 (38.3%) of the 260,080 candidates were under USE.