Budaka district has started investigating some head teachers in the district over poor performance in the Primary Leaving Examination whose results were recently released.
Most of the 8,600 pupils who sat for the exams in 2020 failed to make it to senior one which has puzzled the district leaders prompting them to institute an investigation.
Only 216 pupils passed in Division One, 1,746 in Division Two while 1,156 had Division Three and 907 were in Division 4 and 864 were Ungraded. Absentees were 41.
Paul Higenyi, the Budaka District Education Officer said they are investigating head teachers on various counts which could have led to a high failure rate in the district.
Higenyi said the department is investigating a dubious business where some head teachers secretly registered P5 pupils to sit for PLE.
‘’Some of the parents are calling me revealing how their P5 pupils excelled in PLE, an indication that head teachers are doing it secretly without our notice and this could have contributed to the high rate of failures,’’ he said.
Also under investigations according to Higenyi, are cases of head teachers of government schools who connived with owners of private schools to screen their weak candidates and later register them under UPE schools after extorting money from parents.
This comes at a time when government-aided primary schools in the district have continued to register poor results compared to private schools.
The District Inspector of schools Gerald Kiire said political interference has contributed to the poor performance, but did not elaborate.
The Secretary for Education George Mukamba blamed unregulated transfers of teachers, and negative attitudes of some parents towards education.
A head teacher of one of the schools who declined to be named attributed the poor performance to parents’ failure to provide lunch to the learners and government automatic promotional system.
