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Butambala, Otuke shine in exams
Students of Muyenga High School, Kampala celebrate their good performance with their head teacher, Mr Issa Ntege (4th L), yesterday. PHOTO BY GEOFFREY SERUYANGE.
What you need to know:
Butambala District had 394 students who passed in Division One out of 2,081 while Otuke District had 53 students who passed in Division One out of the 298
Kampala
The new districts of Butambala and Otuke topped performance in district ranking by percentage scores in last year’s Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) examination results released yesterday. But traditional heavyweights, Wakiso, Kampala and Mukono maintained the highest numbers of Division One scores on account of the number of students who sat for the exams.
An analysis of the results by Daily Monitor indicated that whereas Butambala and Otuke districts had fewer students compared to those of Mukono, Wakiso and Bushenyi, they had an overall higher percentage passing in Division One.
Butambala District had 394 students who passed in Division One out of an overall total of 2,081 students hence scoring the highest number of candidates in Grade One- representing 18.9 percent while Otuke District had 53 students who passed in Division One of the 298 students who sat the exams–representing 17.8 per cent.
In the 2010 UCE results, Kampala, Mukono, Bushenyi, Mbarara and Wakiso districts topped the overall rankings by districts. Also the consequent years of 2008 and 2009 showed similar trends.
For instance, in the 2009 UCE results, Bushenyi, Kampala, Mukono, Mbarara, Wakiso and Mpigi topped the list of best performing districts countrywide. In the 2008 results, Kampala came top of the list while the giants in the districts of Mukono, Bushenyi, Masaka, Mpigi were among the top performers.
But whereas Wakiso, Bushenyi, Kampala and Mukono are among the top 10 performing districts, they declined slightly with Mukono assuming the third position (17.6 per cent) and Wakiso in the fourth position (17 per cent). Bushenyi and Mbarara took to the fifth and sixth positions respectively.
Kampala declined to the seventh position followed by Kalungu which assumed the eighth position. Moroto and Napak districts took the ninth and tenth positions respectively. The least performing district was Nakapiripirit which was followed by Amudat, Bulambuli, Lamwo and Katakwi districts where the Education Minister, Ms Jessica Alupo, hails from.
Equipping schools
Ms Alupo said the government is putting more emphasis on equipping schools in new districts and rural areas with the necessary equipment to compete favourably with urban one.
“We have so far constructed school laboratories and libraries for schools in the new districts and we hope to transfer serious teachers there. Those unserious one that absent themselves from duty will be sacked,” she warned.
The Uganda National Examination Board yesterday released the 2011 UCE results showing that overall performance improved at all levels, and failure rate dropped from 6.5 percent in 2010 to 4.2 percent in 2011.
Like the trend has been, urban schools performed better than rural ones.
Schools in new districts, apart from Otuke performed poorly since they are created with little infrastructure like proper schools, science laboratories and limited number of teachers. Some of the schools that performed poorly are in regions that have recently suffered armed conflict, floods and famine.
