17-year-old delivers during PLE

By Emmanuel Alomu and Francis Kagolo

AMURIA - Just hours after delivering a bouncing baby-girl, a pupil of Otubet Primary School in Amuria district sat for her last two papers of the Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) which ended on Tuesday.

The 17-year-old girl delivered in her aunt’s clinic at Orungo trading centre. Florence Apolot, the nurse who helped her deliver, said the baby weighed 3.5Kgs and was healthy.

“After doing her maths and social studies papers on Monday, she went home and started feeling labour pains at about 7:00pm,” said Robert Enayu, the headteacher of the school.

He said the girl’s parents then escorted her to school to complete the papers. She sat for the two papers in the head teacher’s office.

Meanwhile, the exams ended smoothly and Uganda National Examinations Board has set November 20 as the starting date for marking, according to Chrysostom Kibeti, the deputy secretary in charge of primary examinations.

“This is the smoothest PLE exercise we have ever conducted. We have not had shortages of examination papers anywhere. This is a great achievement,” he said.

A total of 565,663 pupils registered to sit this year’s PLE, with 463,332 of these were under the Universal Primary Education programme.

About 1,000 special needs candidates, including prisoners, registered to sit the examinations this year.