Education, district leaders disagree on PLE

Feb 11, 2009

THE education ministry and district education officers yesterday disagreed on the reasons for the poor performance in last year’s Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE).

By Fortunate Ahimbisibwe and Conan Businge

THE education ministry and district education officers yesterday disagreed on the reasons for the poor performance in last year’s Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE).

The ministry argued that the poor performance was due to absenteeism and lack of teachers in some districts.

The district education officers, however, said under funding caused the poor performance.

They said the money paid by the Government per pupil had been reduced from sh8,500 to the sh4,500.

Bundibugyo education officer Esau Nshabirwe said: “The situation in districts is bad. Some of us can hardly afford to travel to Kampala or carry out inspections.”

“Much as we may want to do a good job, at times our hands are tied. We cannot operate without funds,” Arua’s Nicholas Thembo said.
The education sector receives 17% (about sh900b) of the national budget.

But the state minister for primary education, Peter Lokeris, said schools were not inspected and many head teachers and teachers did not show up for work.
Lokeris was addressing district education officers and inspectors of schools at a conference organised to find solutions to the poor performance at Ridar Hotel in Seeta.

He said some districts misused funds allocated to the UPE programme.

Lokeris also cited the issue of ghost teachers on payrolls, saying it led to loss of funds.

He said the ministry had created an inspectorate to improve the supervision of schools.

Out of 463,631 candidates who sat for PLE last year, only 17,021 (3.7 %) candidates passed in division one.

According to Uganda National Examination Board, in 2007, 7.6 % passed in division one.

The commissioner for primary education, Dr Daniel Nkaada, said some teachers had continued to earn salaries even after they quit their jobs.

He said the education officers were also not observing the staff ceiling in their districts.

“The Government provided sh9b to recruit more teachers, but some districts have failed. We are going to lose that money because it will go back to the treasury, yet some schools have no teachers,” he said.

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