Prime
Selection for Senior 1, Five set for next week
Educations and Sports minister, Ms Janet Museveni
What you need to know:
- The exercise will this time be conducted on the same day unlike previously, according to sources.
The Ministry of Education officials are scheduled to conduct Senior One and Senior Five selection exercises next week if the line minister, Ms Janet Museveni, approves the proposed dates, Daily Monitor has learnt.
Reliable sources in the ministry said the officials will meet today to conclusively decide on the exact dates for the selection exercise.
According to some sources, the ministry was supposed to conduct the selection exercise this week, but it was postponed because the minister was engaged.
According to the old proposed schedule Daily Monitor has seen, the ministry was slated to conduct the selection exercise for three days, from Tuesday to yesterday. However, Ms Museveni was engaged with the celebration of the Girl Child Day on Monday and Teachers’ Day on Tuesday.
“We were supposed to conduct the selection exercise this week but the minister was engaged. We have come up with fresh dates, pending approval. If she approves them, we shall be able to do it next week,” a source said.
Another source said the exercise will be conducted in the next seven days. This means that the ministry is likely to conduct this exercise between October 20 and 22.
The source said unlike previously where the ministry would conduct the exercise for both classes separately, they plan to conduct both exercises on the same day this time.
The ministry spokesperson, Mr Denis Mugimba, was unavailable yesterday.
Other top officials, including the Minister for Higher Education, Mr John Chrysostom Muyingo, did not return our calls by press time.
Parents and schools whose candidates sat for the Primary Leaving Examination and Uganda Certificate of Examination have waited for nearly three months without any news on the dates for the selection exercise.
While releasing 2020 Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education in August, Ms Museveni said the selection exercise for Senior One, Senior Five and first year students of tertiary institutions would be conducted between September and October. However, the exercise had not yet taken place.
Mr Muyingo early this month said the ministry would release guidelines for reopening of universities and other tertiary institutions as well as the dates for selection before November.
To date, some traditional schools have admitted students online, much as they were discouraged by the Education ministry on the grounds that it would lock out some students without access to the Internet.
When contacted yesterday, the national chairperson of Secondary Schools’ Head Teachers’ Association, Mr Martin Okiria Obore, who usually coordinates teachers for the exercise, said the ministry has not yet informed them .
He, however, said if the selection is to take place next week, they are ready since it has been long overdue.
President Museveni cleared universities and other tertiary institutions to reopen on November 1 and said primary and secondary schools would reopen next year in January.
Government thus has to ensure that students slated to join first year in technical institutions are selected before reopening next month.
Background
The Ministry of Education is expected to also release a schools calendar stipulating which classes in primary and secondary schools will reopen first when schools reopen next year . Education officials had earlier proposed to give priority to Primary One to Three, Senior Ones in current classes and Senior Two as well as candidate classes.
Primary One to Three pupils have spent nearly two years without stepping a foot to class. The same applies to Senior One and Two students, who studied for almost two months before schools closed
