Naggalama Junior School, according to records, has always been registering majority of their PLE finalists passing with Div 1 grades, and in a spectacular manner, in 2023, the school registered a 100% first grade results by their 55 candidates. In last year’s PLE, out of 65 candidates, 51 passed in Division I while 5 passed in Div II.
In our ongoing series of the National Private Education Institutions Association’s (NAPEIA) preparations for their 4th anniversary next month, our team visited Naggalama Junior School, a school in a peri-urban setting located on Gayaza-Kayunga main road in Nakifuma-Naggalama Town Council, to establish how it has fared since joining the education liberalization wave that kicked off in 1993.
The nationwide economic hardships notwithstanding, 26-year-old Naggalama Junior School in Naggalama-Nakifuma Town Council has soldiered on, and in the face of irregular and unreliable school fees payment by parents, the school management circumvented the hurdle by allowing those with foodstuffs to supply the school in exchange for their children’s education.
This is contained in the sixty-minute interview the school administrators granted to a team of KYAGGWE TV staff on 22nd September 2025 at the school campus.
The Director and founder of the school Lawrence Lugoloobi gave an outline of the school right from inception in 2003 to date, the ups and downs in the 26 years, the COVID-19 and post COVID-19 hiccups, the choking economic challenges countrywide and a host of others.
In what seemed to be a distant and far-fetched dream then, Lugoloobi got an afterthought of constructing a school on a piece of land he had bought for building his home, and in 2003, he transformed his dream into reality.
By then, little did he know that he was setting up an institution that would lay groundwork for the formation of present-day lawyers, teachers, doctors, transporters, marketeers, beauticians, name it.
Himself, a professional teacher, Lugoloobi was handling what he knew best, having taught at St. Matthew Mulago, Namate in Entebbe, Namugongo Girls and St. Agnes Girls’ Boarding Primary School in Naggalama where he served as a Deputy Headteacher.
How did he conceive the idea?
“I realized that I could do something more beneficial to the community and telling from the biting poverty in communities, I began by offering a bursary to every family in the area, as an incentive, which gave us the pioneer seven learners, with the number rising to 54 by the end of term one of that year,” he narrated.
He said all this business was conducted in three classes running from nursery to Primary Two, housed in a single building which has now multiplied to include skyscrapers. From such a humble beginning he said, the school has now soared to a population of close to 800, through an arrangement that saw management adding a class every successive year.
Lugoloobi noted that as they yearned to produce a holistic child, they began by embracing the multi-denominational approach with no religious or any other form of discrimination among learners, and attributed the excellent academic performance on this attribute. Additionally, they have included a vocational training component to teach learners skills in digging, music-dance-and-drama, hand-work, games and sports and other arts.
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Elaborating, Lugoloobi said, “We begin on them early enough before they are destroyed and we give them the full dose so that after ten years, they leave as complete persons ready for the next level”.
Naggalama Junior School, according to records, has always been registering majority of their PLE finalists passing with Div 1 grades, and in a spectacular manner, in 2023, the school registered a 100% first grade results by their 55 candidates. In last year’s PLE, out of 65 candidates, 51 passed in Division I while 5 passed in Div II.
Despite the registered successes, it has not been a bed of roses!
Like many proprietors, Lugoloobi decried the harsh taxation, lamenting that tax collectors are sometimes erroneously attracted by new development like infrastructure to impose prohibitive taxes on them.
He is optimistic that the school is destined for bigger times, adding that although parents are pushing for commencement of a secondary section, management feels that they still need to intensify primary level programmes.
To save parents the bother of having to check on their children during the school term, there is a residential nurse and, besides, the school is located within a short distance from St. Francis Naggalama Hospital which he said is accessible any time during the day or night.
The school has taken success outside classroom work
Naggalama Junior School attaches great importance to culture through MDD and in 2022, they emerged winners of the annual Buganda Institution and School Music Assemblage held under the theme ‘Kingship and Culture’.
One remarkable drawback Lugoloobi vividly recalls is the COVID-19 period during which many thought the world had come to the end. After the pandemic he narrated, many parents were unwilling to have their children get to the same classes they were in before the two-year closure of schools, with many thinking the learners could be made to skip some classes.
“But we strived to explain that to be complete professionals in future, their children had to cover the syllabus as set by the government, and where we failed to agree, we allowed the parents to take their children wherever they felt they could be admitted under such conditions,” he noted.
A piece of advice from the director
In an appeal to parents, the Director noted that although we are entering the election year, children’s education should not be involved in this, and reminded them that the school programme including PLE and nursery section graduation are underway, and added that planning for 2026 is also in pipeline.
Headteacher’s remarks
The headteacher, Ronald Lujaganya said the school has been kept running by sticking to the culture of recruiting the best, qualified and experienced teachers fulfilling duties to the dot, and those striving to maintain child retention by attending to children’s study requirements as set out.
Lujaganya said retention is given priority consideration because he reasoned, a child rotated from school to school loses concentration, and he said one way of ensuring retention is through drawing a parent-friendly school fees payment structure.
The Director of Studies, Stephen Kalema Nsubuga highly believes that what has kept the school shining is the resolve to give each learner what they came for, including awakening their untapped talents to keep their brains alert and ready in and out of class.
He said, “We discourage the tendency of limiting them in their yearning for knowledge, and teachers take the trouble to ensure the learners love whatever they do, and to avoid discriminating against them over their individual weaknesses”.
A word from the office of students’ leadership
Ndagire Whitney Susan, the Head Girl, is proud of her school for having awakened the mathematics in her, saying that when she came in 2024 in P.5, she had a phobia for mathematics but that gradually, because of friendly teachers, she now loves the subject.
And the Head Boy, Bamulambe Christian of P.6 kept referring to himself as a master in English because of the mastery he has picked from the wise counselling of his English teachers. On challenges he encounters as a head boy, Bamulambe said boys are ruder than girls and, besides, they tend to take him for granted and, without disclosing his tips, said he has devised a way of handling these minor shortcomings.