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Education ministry undertakes headcount in 1,900 schools
KCCA official Patrick Kaitu checks files of Kololo Secondary School students in Kampala during the headcount exercise on Tuesday. PHOTO BY DOMINIC BUKENYA
KAMPALA- The ministry of Education has kick-started the annual head counting exercise in public secondary schools countrywide, targeting 1,942 institutions.
Mr Patrick Muinda, the ministry spokesperson, on Tuesday said the programme would help to expose “ghost” students in institutions under the Universal Post Primary Education and Training (UPPET), the Universal Post O-Level Education and Training (UPOLET) and the Universal Secondary Education (USE).
“The compiling process shall be completed in two weeks from which we shall be able to identify if there are any ‘ghost’ students,” Mr Muinda said.
“This time every child must be in full school uniform with a school identity card and a file containing the student’s administrative details, without which someone has to explain,” he noted.
To make the exercise more efficient, Mr Muinda said this year, the monitoring has been expanded to involve top government officials at districts such as resident district commissioners, chief administrative officers, district education officers and district security officers.
Ms Eva Nattabi, the education officer for Kampala Central Division, who is also the accounting officer at Kololo Secondary School, said only a few students were found absent from school.
“Despite the big numbers in this school with over 100 students in each of the eight streams, they all have lists for students with their corresponding files containing their details,” she said.
