Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja
The Government of Uganda plans to establish a Technical University that will impart skills among academically challenged students who fail national examinations.
Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja made the revelation while responding to a question raised by Lilian Aber (Kitgum DWR) while reacting to statistics from the Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) that were released in January 2023 by Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB).
Aber raised concern on the released the PLE results a total of 1,197,53 didn’t acquire the required grades to join secondary education among them were 97,109 candidates who were ungraded and 20,844 candidates had Division X.
The Premier in response said that out of 832,654 candidates who sat PLE 740,702 qualified to join Secondary school and called on parents to embrace vocational education, noting that Government also offers bursary to 2000 students who join community polytechnic and technical schools and there are twenty of these spread across the country and each of these has 60 slots of students under government scholarship.
“Government intends to allow vocational students to progress from the lower level to University level. Soon, Government will introduce a National Technical University that shall see this dream come true so that we produce human capital resources with skills that address our contemporary challenges that address our modern economic set up. It is therefore imperative to teach our communities that failing to pass the formal education examination is never the end of life and encourage them to embrace vocational and technical education,” Nabbanja said.
She also attributed the failure to attain the required grades to the adverse effects of Covid-19 pandemic that forced schools to be on and off due to the lockdown but said the candidates who didn’t attain the required grades to join secondary education have several options to take, the immediate option is for them to repeat and sit for PLE for 2023.
However, the Premier’s response was questioned by Leader of Opposition, Mathias Mpuuga who criticized her for handling the issue casually, and wondered why there hasn’t been a detailed statement from the Ministry of Education on PLE results.
“By simply giving parents several options, it isn’t enough. Teachers have been disoriented. May we know why there are more failures on government schools than private schools. The Prime Minister said the reason for failure is because of COVID-19, did COVID-19 single out children from government schools and left private schools alone? So it isn’t Covid, the problem is different go for it, otherwise the sector still begs for answers,” said Mpuuga.
