UPC digs holes in Universal Primary Education

CAPTION: Head teachers at the Primary Leave Examination selection exercise in Kampala January 30th 2025. (Courtesy photo).
By David Mwanga
KAMPALA – The recently released Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) results by the ministry of education and sports have brought in worrying experiences that cannot be just ignored, an official of the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) has said.
“Last Thursday 23rd January, 2025, the Ministry of Education and Sports but out of over 7 million pupils who enrolled for a seven-years cycle from primary one to primary seven in 2018, the report has it that only over 3 million pupils sat for PLE in 2024,” said the party’s head of media and communication Muzeyi Faizo.
He said in a statement released at the weekly media briefing on January 29, 2025 that UPC and the rest of the stakeholders in the country would like to know where is the missing 4.5 million pupils who did not complete the seven-year cycle of primary education.
“This also includes those who registered for PLE but dropped out along the way, which situation extends to both secondary and higher learning institutions,” he said in a statement released at 8Uganda House in Kampala.
He said that this is a younger generation being nurtured to take over from the old generation to advance Uganda and Africa to greater heights in terms of social, economic and political development.
“However, if such a huge number of the youthful population misses out on education at primary school level it simply means that we have failed their future and ruined their productive capacities which we basically need to develop further and further,” he added.
He pointed out the existence of disparities in performance between private and public schools as well as rural and urban primary schools.
“The challenges that continue to face Universal Primary Education (UPE) since its inception in 1997 need to be addressed, which include but not limited inadequate funding (Shs20,000) by government,”.
“We still have congested classrooms as a result of abusing the recommended teacher to pupil ration of 1-40 and pupil to text book ratio (1-1),” he noted adding that the teachers are under paid and most of them lack accommodation.
“The schools are failing to provide regular meals to the pupils and this affects learning that cannot take place on empty stomach,” he said.
Adding, “When the government made a proposal for each pupil to have a glass of milk and an egg a day; most of the parents/guardians and school authorities were up in arms with this kind of a proposal which is not in line with economic realities.
Faizo also called for the protection of the girl child.
”As a country, we need to protect the rights of the girl child by avoiding early marriages or forced marriages whileconsidering that child labour is also on a rise in the country,”.