Lukwago decries KCCA schools’ poor performance

Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago has raised concern about the poor performance of Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) schools in the Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE).

While presenting the performance of KCCA public schools in Kampala yesterday, Mr Lukwago revealed that of the 38,105 pupils who sat for PLE from the 79 KCCA schools 1,930 candidates failed compared to 1,266 in 2020.

The lord mayor noted that the best two candidates in these schools both scored Aggregate Five and the second best scored Aggregate Six.

KCCA schools registered 12,896 candidates in Division One, 17,402 in Division Two, 3,451 in Division Three, 2,426 in Division Four 1,333 ungraded and 597 in grade x.

“…if you go to the breakdown you will find that we have very few students who excel, according to our standard,” Mr Lukwago said.

Mr Lukwago said although there was an increase in the number of first grades from 9,077 in 2020 to 12,896 in 2022, the overall of performance dropped from 96.2 percent in 202o to 95 percent in 2022.

He attributed the poor performance to underfunding, limited number of teachers and overwhelming teacher-pupil ratio, poor infrastructure, government’s automatic promotion policy, among others.

Mr Lukwgo said there is need for government to implement the KCCA strategic plan which hopes to improve the performance of the schools.

The plan is expected to last five years (2020/2021 to 2024/2025) with the government providing Shs100b per year.

Mr Lukwago also noted that the capitation grant of Shs9,300 per pupil per year given to schools is not enough to cater for the pupils given the high cost of living and inflation in the city.

According to the lord mayor, the masterplan provides for model schools in Kampala with facilities such as ICT, facilities for learners with special needs, a school library, among others.

“We regret to inform you that this master plan is still shelved. We made the highlight that we shall have a model school to host population of about 1,500-2,000 pupils, but many of them now host 3,000-4,000. That is a crowd! ” Mr Lukwago said.

Mr Lukwago urged the government to increase salaries of arts teachers.
He said the arts teachers are earning peanuts compared to their counterparts, which has demotivated them.
The KCCA spokesperson, Mr Simon Kasyate, backed the mayor on the challenges KCCA is facing. 

Efforts to get a comment from the Ministry of Education and Sports were futile as the spokesperson, Mr Dennis Mugimba and the permanent secretary, Ms Ketty Lamaro, did not answer our repeated calls.