The just relesead Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) examinations results for the year 2017 show a higher failure rate for students in the Eastern part of Uganda. The results from UNEB point to a coloration of the steady trend that has showed Eastern Uganda’s poor performance at all levels of education compared to other regions.
UNEB released the 2017 O’Level results on Wednesday reporting a general improvement in performance compared to the previous year, 2016. Out of the 320,119 that sat the exams, 9% attained Division One, 17% got Division Two while 8.9% registered failure.
Generally, the failure rate dropped from 13.1% in 2016 to 8.9% in 2017, majority of them girls (9.3%) while 8.4% were boys. The bigger chunk of failures were registered in the Universal Secondary Education (USE) representing 11% while 7% were in non USE schools.
However, all these statistics appear to link the poor performance to a specific part of the country – Eastern region. The results from UNEB indicate that while the national mean failure Rate stood at 8.8%, some districts recorded more than twice the failure rate.
These districts include Bukwo, Butaleja, Bundibugyo, Kween, Kapchorwa, Buliisa, Bulambuli, Pallisa, Sironko, Busia, Kasese and Bududa. Out of the twelve districts, ten are located in Eastern Uganda.
Bukwo had only one (1) student with Division One while Kween had 4, Bulambuli had 6, Butaleja had 12, Buliisa had 16, Siroko had 19 and Bududa had 22.
UNEB notes that language deficiencies continue to contribute to the poor performance given that students face hardships in interpreting the questions.
Dan Odongo, the UNEB Executive Secretary said that; “English is the language of instruction. It follows that candidates’ ability to understand the demands of questions in the examination papers and offer adequate responses to those questions depends a lot on the candidates proficiency in English”.
Education Consultant and seasoned educationist, Fagil Mandy attributes the poor performance in the districts to inadequate supervision on teachers and headteachers by school management committees and district authorities.
“Performance is as a result of how much teachers are doing and how much head teachers are doing. There’s not enough pressure by the departments of education in those districts,” Mandy told SoftPower News.
“You may find that the teacher absenteeism is also high. The other reason could be the lack of practice of English language in those schools. They could be using a lot of vernacular,” he added.
He also appealed for more effort from the political actors whom he blamed for taking a back sit in the delivery of education services.
During the release of the Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) weeks ago, the Minister of Education, Janet Museveni said it was time to find out why pupils in Eastern Uganda have persistently continued to perform poorly. She said she is set to visit the region on a fact finding mission in regards to the bad performance.