By Conan Businge

The Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) will today (Wednesday) hand over results for last Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) to the education ministry. 

Minutes after the handover, the education and sports minister (Rtd) Lt. Jessica Alupo is expected to release the results to the nation. 

Earlier, sources in UNEB on Tuesday told New Vision that, “in case there are no major changes, PLE results will be released this [Tuesday] afternoon.” But it was not the case.

Last year, about 535,500 pupils registered for the national examinations. Of these, an estimated 430,000 pupils who will get their results today will have an opportunity to access free education in secondary schools and vocational institutions, come next month.

First time for Alupo

Alupo who was attending a 10-day National Resistance Movement (NRM) Parliamentary caucus at the National Leadership Institute in Kyankwanzi, returned to conduct today’s national event. 

 This will be the first time Alupo will be releasing PLE, taking on from Namirembe Bitamazire whom she replaced as education minister last year.

Sources at the ministry revealed that the selection for Senior One students is expected to kick off next week. 

Parents with pupils, who are yet to join Senior One, are likely to face stiff competition for their children’s vacancies in most of the top schools in the country. This is because most schools are likely to hike their entry points into Senior One. 

Better performance?

This is because there is growing evidence that the performance improved in this year’s awaited results for primary leaving examinations, compared to that of last year. More so, there were more candidates who sat for primary leaving examinations last year, compared to the previous one. 

Admission is based on order of merit according to PLE results, or equivalents and the original order of choices made by the candidate.

Computer selection of students to admit in Senior One is up to 90% for boarding schools and 95% for day ones. The rest of the percentage of admission in each school is administered by the overall chairman of the admission committee, and in this case it was assistant commissioner of secondary schools Francis Agula.

Selection

Under the selection criteria, a candidate who misses the first choice usually goes to the second choice school, depending on his or her score. Schools normally give priority to candidates who chose them as the first or second option.

In case a student fails to turn up 14 days after he or she had been admitted, a school may admit an eligible candidate to take over the vacant slot.

In case of mixed sex, each school is expected to try and enroll 50% of each sex (male and female) so as to gradually be able to curb the gender disparity in the country’s education system. The number of male students usually overshadows that of females at almost every level of Uganda’s education system, a situation which the government is striving to reverse.

But most Universal Secondary Education (USE) schools, mainly up-country ones, are expected to admit candidates who scored up to aggregate 28.