By Sandra Birungi
A total of 160, 000 students are going to miss out on being admitted to S.1 to government aided and privately owned schools but supported by government despite obtaining the minimum requirements needed to be admitted.
Of the 480, 067 students who passed the Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) last year, 2012, government can, and could only take 316, 980 students only. 20% of them being from non-Universal Primary Education (non-UPE) schools. According to the Assistant Commissioner in the Ministry of Education, Francis Agula, there has been a 22% increment in the number of students taken by government from 2011.
Talking about the cut off points, Mr. Agula said they were determined by the number of students who sat in 2012 and the general performance. “The cut-off points have been determined by the general performance and the number of candidates who applied in an individual school. In some schools, it has not changed while in others it has improved from last year,” he said.
156,900 students have been admitted in 922 Universal Secondary Education (USE) schools, 131,100 have been placed in 863 USE private schools, 3,240 in 62 USE BTVET government and partnering institutions and 25,740 will join the 115 non-USE government-aided schools.
The remaining number of students who were not allocated in government schools is however too much for some schools. For example Teso College had 300 slots allocated to it out of the 1,807 pupils who applied. Despite this fact, the school could only admit 250 students because of the limited facilities at the school. “Our cut-off points have been aggregate 9. We have even left out candidates with these marks. We have vacancies for 250 students not 300, which the government has given us. Our facilities, including classrooms and teachers are limited,” head teacher, Mr Silvester Ocaatum said.