The Mbarara District Education Officer Mr. Gabriel Ahimbisibwe has dismissed the Primary Leaving Examination results as announced by national media houses.
While speaking to Chimpreports yesterday, Ahimbisibwe said he was surprised to hear that Mbarara district came in the 7th position yet according to UNEB results presented to him, the district came in the 3rd position, with Sheema District coming 1st followed by Wakiso.
“Actually we had 19.5% of First Graders while Wakiso had 21% and Sheema emerged winner with 23% according to the UNEB ranking; the positions I heard in the media I don’t where they got that from,” said the DEO.
He said he was happy with Mbarara’s performance compared to last years’ PLE results where they came fourth; and charged head teachers and teachers to remain committed to their work.
“Last year we never had any candidate scoring 4 aggregates but this time we have over 20 of these,” he noted.
The DEO also called for a change of the mindset that Universal Primary Educations schools cannot outperform the private ones, noting that some urban private ones had performed poorer than village government schools.
“You have examples like Kibaare Primary School in Ndeija Sub County, a village school which had all its 20 candidates passing in 1st and 2nd grades,” Gabriel said.
The DEO said that he introduced standard promotional exams in the district from P.4 to P.6 to gauge the pupils’ performance when it’s still early to avoid surprise PLE results.
“I realized that schools put much attention on pupils when they cross to P.7 instead of helping them when they are still in lower classes; you find that a candidate scores good grade at P.7 but when he joins a good secondary school the performance declines” he noted.
He also revealed that he is using transfers of head teachers to enhance school performance.
“Ever since I came in, in 2014, about 70 teachers have been dismissed or transferred during annual assessment of teachers.”
Schools which performed well in Mbarara district include:
Mbarara Municipal School with 319 in Grade 1 and 60 in 2nd Grade
Mbarara Junior School with 155 in Grade 1 and 35 in 2nd Grade
Mbarara Preparatory School with 67 in Grade 1 and 14 in 2nd Grade
Kibaare Primary with 11 in Grade1 and 9 in Grade 2
JB Katatumba Primary with 17 in Division 1 and only one in 2nd grade
The district recorded 3031 First Grades, (1991 of these from the Municipality).