133,000 primary leavers stranded as schools open

At least 20 percent of the total 648,662 candidates who passed the 2023 Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) have not been admitted to any secondary school, the Education ministry has revealed.

A total of 515,160 candidates were admitted to more than 2,000 schools, both government and private, during the two-day Senior One selection exercise in Kampala between Thursday and Friday last week. 

This left 133,502 potential Senior One students unadmitted.

The chairperson of the selection committee, Dr Jane Egau, attributed this to the few spaces in the schools which turned up for the exercise.

“The capacity of an institution is measured against many indicators such as staffing, classrooms, dormitories for boarding schools. The school can only have numbers that the facility can carry and so this year we have agreed to carry out a survey to establish the capacity of all our schools,” she said.

Dr Egau added that the remaining learners will be admitted by private schools which did not turn up for the exercise and some technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions.

Hopeful
“The placement process doesn’t end today. Many parents will come to school seeking either special consideration or guidance. As I said yesterday, (Thursday), handle them with professionalism, and understanding. Don’t hide away from them,” Dr Egau said.

The selection exercise, she said, is aimed at ensuring that all those who have not been selected, are absorbed.

“So schools that have not got enough candidates as per their capacity, shop for more candidates and those that have unselected applicants have to ensure they are sold and placed in other schools that have space,” she said.

All traditional and other top schools, which turned up for the exercise, admitted not more than 200 candidates each, with the majority taking between Aggregate Four and 12. 

From central, schools such as Gayaza High School, King’s College Budo, Nabisunsa Girls, and St Mary’s College Namagunga, admitted between Aggregate Four and Six while their counterparts from upcountry did not exceed Aggregate 12.

The non-traditional and average schools did not also exceed Aggregate 28 and none of the schools among all those Daily Monitor spoke to, admitted beyond 400 learners.

The 2023 PLE statistics from the Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) show that 86,582 candidates (47,452 boys and 39,130 girls) passed in first grade, 336,507 candidates (164,906 boys and 171,601 girls) in the second grade, 156,290 candidates (69,870 boys and 86,420 girls) in third grade and 69,283 candidates (31,415 boys and 37,862 girls) passed in the fourth division.

This implies that schools admitted all candidates who passed in the first and second grades and picked an additional 92,071 candidates from those who scored third grade to make 515,160 students.

The remaining 133,502 candidates, including 64,219 candidates who passed in third grade and 69,283 who passed in the fourth grade, will be admitted at the mercy of schools, especially private ones whose vacancies have not been filled yet.

In an interview with Monitor yesterday, Mr Hasadu Kirabira, the chairperson of the National Private Education Institutions Association (NPEIA), said they are ready to admit the learners but castigated the government for unfairly conducting the selection exercise.

“As government, we expect them to always do first come first serve, other than focusing on the grades where they first select the cream-de-la-cream [best students with good grades], and later send us the remaining number. But as private institutions, we are ready to absorb these students and train them into resourceful people in this country,” he said.

He added that the government should start rethinking the entire selection process if it is to be fair to all Ugandans, especially for students to fairly get admission to top schools.

“The process should be looked at beyond grades as it is being done now because remember the government, despite having a small number of schools as compared to private schools, has a bigger absorption capacity compared to us whose capacity is still growing,” he said.

TVETs option
Dr Egau further advised the non-selected candidates to join one of the 41 Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) institutions which admit Primary Seven leavers, who are receiving applications until February 9 and carry out their selection exercise on February 12.

In TVETs, a PLE leaver is eligible to pursue 15 hands-on skills programmes including welding and metal fabrication, motor vehicle mechanics, block laying and concrete practice, electrical installation practice, plumbing and pipe fitting, carpentry and joinery, and agriculture.

Others are garment design and construction, fabric and interior design, food preparation and processing, leather work and shoe making, and business studies (accounting, computer studies, secretarial studies, Store keeping). 

“This application process was decentralised and applications are being received at any of the TVET institutions other than colleges. This, therefore, is to confirm that the sector has the capacity to absorb all the 648,662 who passed PLE in 2023,” she said.

The deputy executive secretary of Examination Management at Uganda Business and Technical Examinations Board (Ubteb), Dr Wilfred Nahamya, said taking the TVET option is equally important and sometimes better than pursuing O-Level since the students here are taught a skill.

“Here a student is taught a skill of their choice which they master since they study it for three years and they come out when they have an equivalent of senior four. Another thing is that as long as a candidate passes with grades one to four, they are admitted across the 41 government TVETs in the country,” he said.

“This time the government did it in a good way where students first express interests before they are placed unlike those days when TVETs could be joined by only those who have not performed well in PLE but now even those with grade one and two are joining willingly,” he said.

Enrolment of students in TVETs have gradually increased. Statistics from Ubteb indicate that the number increased from 28000 in 20111 to 103,000 in 2021.

Dropouts 

Mr Hasadu Kirabira, the chairperson of the National Private Education Institutions Association, warned that denial of placement by schools will cause more trauma to the students and increase the number of dropouts.

Only 39.6 percent of the total 1,888, 847 pupils who were enrolled in Primary One in 2016, managed to complete the primary cycle and of those who completed, 43,272 pupils did not transit to secondary because they failed to attain the minimum 34 aggregate 34 to qualify.

Relatedly, the Secretary General of the Uganda National Teachers Union (Unatu), Mr Filbert Bates Baguma said a failure to place more than 130,000 learners in secondary schools, yet they qualified shows government gaps in planning.

“Government knows the number of schools in this country both public and private and they should be planning for all candidates whom they also know. They should always plan for all students, otherwise it’s now parents of the affected students suffering and you may even find that some students fail to go beyond primary level,” he said.

Compiled by: Jane Nafula, Busein Samilu, Sylivia Katushabe, Felly Lydia Akullu and Karim Muyobo.