More than 230,000 students who pass their Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) and qualify for secondary level do not reach Senior Four, our analysis of the Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) statistics for the last eight years shows.
Media analysis, which compared the total number of students who qualified for Senior One between 2017 and 2020, with their counterparts who subsequently sat for the Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) from 2020 to 2024, showed that 945,621 students did not make it from Senior One to Senior Four.
How many of these joined the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions is unclear.
Education experts and stakeholders yesterday linked this increasing dropout rate to financial constraints, low learners’ education interest, and natural factors such as teenage pregnancies, which they said should be addressed urgently.
Officials from the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) on the other hand said they will start tracking the whereabouts of all enrolled learners from primary to university through the Education Management Information System (EMIS), as part of the solution to this problem. Between 2017 and 2020, at least 2.3 million students qualified for Senior One, but only 1.4 million studied up to Senior Four, according to Uneb statistics.
The statistics further show that 11,000 of these candidates registered for UCE but did not turn up for the exams, bringing the total dropout number to 945,621. On average, the whereabouts of 236,405 students who qualify for Senior One are unknown, which translates to 19,700 students monthly, 4,546 weekly, and 648 daily.
For instance, of the 617,150 students who qualified for Senior One in 2020, only 359,417 made it to Senior Four, where more than 2,200 failed to sit for the UCE exams. The situation was not different in 2023, where 240,000 candidates of the 599,593 who had qualified for Senior One in 2019 could not be traced.
The 2020 and 2022 UCE also registered similar gaps in terms of the number of those who qualified and those who made it Senior Four.
Dr Kedrace Turyagyenda, the permanent secretary of the Education Ministry, said part of these missing students joined different TVETs that offer two-year courses on certificate and diploma levels. The 2021/22-2025/26 TVET Communication, Marketing, and Rebranding Strategy released by the ministry last year showed that the enrolment level in TVETs is still low. For example, between 2007 and 2017, the enrollment increased from 25,262 to 129,000 respectively.
The Uganda Business and Technical Examinations Board (Ubteb), the government agency that assesses the examinations from TVETs in its June 2023 end of year performance report indicated that it assessed 82,080 candidates in the 2021/22 academic year and another 166,218 candidates in 2022/23 academic year. There are no clear statistics on how many missing UCE students joined TVETs because they admit students from PLE, UCE, and Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education.
Dr Mary Gorreti Nakabugo, the executive director of UWEZO, attributed some of the dropouts to teenage pregnancies, and early childhood labour, which she said were fueled by the two-year Covid-19 lockdown. “When schools temporarily opened, we did a survey and found out that many students had dropped out and girls the reasons were teen pregnancies, early marriages while boys had started engaging in economic activity, which I think must have contributed to the dropout rate,” Dr Nakabugo said.
Stumbling block
“The major factor causing these dropouts is financial constraints because the majority of parents, especially in villages, cannot afford to pay for schools and even in government schools, there are those hidden costs like buying books, and feeding that are hard to be got by these parents,” she added. The March 2022 UNFPA Brief on Teenage Pregnancies in Uganda indicated that the cases of teenage pregnancies rose from 29,835 cases monthly in 2019 to 31,566 cases in 2021.
Mr Hasadu Kirabira, the chairperson of the National Private Education Institutions Association (NPEIA), also linked the dropout rates to economic hardships but added that the collapse of the village council system is partly to blame. “We always had the secretary of education at LC1 ensuring that all children are at school, which is not the case today. But as I said, these students face more challenges compared to their primary counterparts because at this stage even other parents start boycotting their responsibilities assuming that the students are now grown,” he said.
Relatedly, Mr Filbert Baguma, the secretary general of the Uganda National Teachers Association (Unatu) said: “Students also drop out because they have low interest in what they are studying. For you to be in school and maintain, there must be something interesting for you to be there.” Dr Turyagyenda said the government is not sitting but also doing what it can to ensure that this problem is solved once and for all.
We are in the process of reengineering our Education Management Information System (EMIS), and then we shall be able to trace all the learners because at EMIS, each child has a number, so if I transit to another school or technical college, you can still be tracked,” she said. Dr Nakabugo advised the government to intensify the sensitisation campaign for parents, especially in rural areas, who have made it a habit of leaving children for the government to provide everything, including books, uniforms, and food.
“The government must also invest in a strong foundation so that learners love schools from childhood and as well reduce the years a child spends in nursery school from three to one,” she said. Mr Kirabira on the other hand called for the restoration of strong LC systems that will ensure that each child is at school and on time. The State Minister for Higher Education, Dr John C. Muyingo, last announced that the government will declare universal and compulsory secondary education, where they intend to encourage every child in school-going age to access education.
Museveni Position
President Museveni has long warned government schools to refrain from charging extra fees that scare away parents.
“The NRM government introduced UPE in 1997, but the head teachers and PTA are abusing it. If the capitation grant is not sufficient, they should inform us so that we can provide additional funding instead of sending these children out of school,” he said during the Liberation Day celebrations in Jinja last year.
Additional reporting by Daily Monitor
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