Experts comment on why children fail

Nov 27, 2007

“THE children blamed poor performance on poor teaching and regular teacher absenteeism. Frequent repetition has been observed by a number of studies as an indicator of pupils who are vulnerable to dropping out of school.

  • “THE children blamed poor performance on poor teaching and regular teacher absenteeism. Frequent repetition has been observed by a number of studies as an indicator of pupils who are vulnerable to dropping out of school.

  • Teachers, however, deny causing the poor performance. Patrick Mukasa, a teacher in Mpigi, says: “This should not be used as an outright excuse for pupils failing”

  • Education ministry says the Government is implementing automatic promotion as a way of dodging costs. He says the ministry had even at a given time decided to openly tell all pupils who wanted to repeat any class, to do so at their own cost. They, however, silenced the idea, suspecting that headteachers would cheat pupils.

  • Fagil Mandy says teachers are never punished for their failures, when pupils fail to pass. “It is at times due to the teachers’ incompetence. Why should a child be punished, while the teacher is not made accountable for his or her performance?”


  • “The policy on automatic promotion may seem unfair, but the Government does not have the resources to waste. If there is a genuine reason like illness that compels a child to repeat, then it is the parent, not the Government to incur the costs,” he says.

    Agaba argues that the large influx of students in schools brought about by UPE and USE leaves no room for repeaters.
    Mohammed Bulondo, the outgoing commissioner for pre-primary and primary education, says the ministry does not set pass marks.

    “The ministry expects school administrators to follow the principle of automatic promotion where every child who attends class for a full year and sits for end of term exams automatically qualifies to be promoted,” he says.

    He notes that automatic promotion has been in existence since 1962, but schools have not observed it. This explains why each school has its own pass mark against which students are promoted.

    Fagil Mandy, an education consultant, says automatic promotion is very good. “No one has the right to force a child to repeat. It can only be through agreement between a parent and the teachers, for a child to repeat,” he explains, adding: “It is psychologically devastating for a child to repeat a class.”

    Mandy says teachers are never punished for their failures, when pupils fail to pass. “It is at times due to the teachers’ incompetence. Why should a child be punished, while the teacher is not made accountable for his or her performance?”

    Alex Matovu, a primary school teacher in Masaka, disagrees with Bulondo: “The primary objectives of starting the UPE programme will be lost if the Government concentrates a lot on numbers other than the quality of people that they are sending to the job market. Quality seems to be getting sacrificed, at the altar of numbers.”

    Peter Tusubira, says: “This is going to bring the quality of education down. UPE’s progress should not be determined by numbers only, but also the quality.”
    However, other people think repeating is good for pupils.

    “When the ministry and donors now agree to abolish repeating, a large gate seems to be opening up for the majority of pupils considered as idiots,” says Richard Opio, a parents. He says like cows, pupils will together enter the kraal, whether satisfied or not.

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