42,000 Amuru learners fail to complete primary education cycle

At least 42,342 learners, who joined primary school in 2017, will not complete their primary education circle this year, according to a report of Amuru District’s education department.
The report noted that the district registered 46,000 learners from 51 government-aided schools and two private primary schools in the 2017 cohort. However, as of this year, only 3,658 are registered for Primary Leaving Education (PLE). A total of 2,109 of the candidates are boys while 1,549 are girls.

“We cannot only have 3,658 children who are supposed to complete the cycle of Primary Seven. It means many children are disappearing along the way from Primary One to Primary Seven, so
we need to look for them,” Mr Michael Lakony, the Amuru District chairperson, said while releasing the mock examinations results from Lacor Primary School on Monday.
He added: “These are our burdens in the district that we need to rapidly analyse as policymakers, as leaders, as teachers, so that we do something.”

Mr Lakony told teachers, head teachers, and the district executive committee that Amuru is grappling with poor attitudes towards education among learners and their parents and teenage pregnancies.
Statistics on antenatal care services from the 14 health facilities revealed that 1,289 teenage girls under 18 years attended the first antenatal care services while 5,035 mothers aged 20 years and above attended the same services since May this year.

Of these five teenage girls were tested and confirmed HIV-positive while 61 aged above 20 years were also confirmed with the virus.
In the same period, 706 teenage girls were delivered from the health facilities while 2,688 above 18 years were also delivered from the different health facilities.

The authorities pointed out Atiak Town Council with 93 candidates and Pogo Sub-county with 92 candidates as the areas with least number of candidates in Amuru.
Expressing her discomfort, Ms Joyce Lanyero, the district education officer, said all stakeholders should rise to address the problem through awareness creation and mindset change in education. Ms Lanyero urged head teachers to not only concentrate on the P7 candidates.
“I think the reduction in the registration of our candidates could also be as a result of screening in our schools. Don’t
again set (exams) heavily for screening when they (pupils) are already in P7, for the girls now they will just decide to go to their homes. Let us try and support our children so that we have many as possible completing P7,’’she said.
On his part, Mr Dominic Otto, the inspector of schools in Amuru, said the district education department is enhancing the capacity of teachers to keep learners in school and to improve their performance.

‘’As inspectors, we are the core bodies for quality assurance. I want to share with you one challenge, we have few government-aided primary schools, yet the performance is wanting.’’
‘’There is a challenge before us, which needs a small thing for us to discover so that we can pick up,” Mr Aggrey Akera, the district secretary for education noted.

The authorities also pointed to underlying challenges, including few government schools, limited funding for education, with the district seeking Shs65 billion for construction of staff houses and classroom blocks, and salary discrepancies.

Mock results

According to the 2024 examination results for Amuru District released on Monday, 1,706 candidates failed, representing 46.64 percent of the 3,658 candidates who sat from the 53 government-aided primary schools. Of this, 2,109 are boys while 1,549 are girls.
In the First Division, there were 103 candidates, Division Two had 560, Division Three had 494, and Division X (those who missed) had 145.