The Nakasongola District Education officials have attributed the poor Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) performance to rampant absenteeism of learners and teacher shortages.
According to PLE results released on Thursday, at least 607 (14.4 %) out of 4349 candidates who sat in Nakasongola failed the examinations.
The results further indicate that only 269 candidates passed in Division One, 1848 passed in Division Two, 1004 passed in Division Three, and 465 candidates passed in Division Four.
Sam Mbangire, the Nakasongola District Education Officer (DEO), explained that although the pass rate is at 85.6% of the total candidates who sat, they are still concerned about 14.4% of the candidates who were ungraded.
Mbangire explained that department investigations indicate that rampant absenteeism by learners and teachers is a major cause of the district’s high failure rate.
He said that since several parents are pastoralists, they ask their children to stay away and attend to their cattle, especially during the dry season, hence the learners miss classes and fail to complete the syllabus.
Mbangire added that other parents who live near Lake Kyoga, also go with the children to carry out fishing hence they also fail to concentrate on studies.
He also noted that due to a lack of staff quarters at schools, several teachers travel long distances from trading centres and others leave early hence they miss lessons, something that affects learners.
Currently, the district has only 299 housing units which is not enough to cater for 998 teachers available in Nakasongola government schools.
Mbangire said the situation has been made worse with the staffing crisis where currently 120 teachers resigned, abandoned work, or retired but they haven’t been replaced over delay to constitute District Service Commission in the past three years.
But Mbangire said that after the constitution of the District Service Commission recently, the District advertised 84 vacant seats for teachers to address the shortage and promote education.
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He added that the district with support from the Ministry of Education and Sports is implementing the Teacher Effectiveness and Learner Achievement (TELA) system to enhance monitoring of teachers’ attendance to pupils among strategies to improve performance.
Richard Kirabo the Chairperson of the Headteachers Association said that some schools have only three teachers looking after learners spread over seven classes making it difficult to offer necessary support to all to pass.
“Most of the learners who failed are in UPE schools where parents don’t contribute anything including scholastic materials to learners or support hiring of extra teachers to teach learners. So, those who passed in UPE schools, it was a miracle because we are constrained” Kirabo said.
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Eldard Muyanga, the District Secretary for Education said that even the learners who attend classes daily, their parents don’t give them lunch making concentration difficult during lessons.
Muyanja said that as leaders, they intend to intensify sensitization on the need to pay lunch fees at schools and encourage parents, especially in fishing communities and pastoral areas, to leave their children to stay in school to complete the syllabuses.
In 2023, at least 633 candidates failed in Nakasongola district and it’s not clear whether they repeated classes or dropped out of the school.
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