Tell Us Best Exam Performers: Open Letter to UNEB

In 2007, the Executive Secretary of UNEB, Mr. Matthew Bukenya, announced that the Board would no longer disclose the best performers in its examinations—explaining that such disclosure encourages unhealthy competition and, consequently, examination malpractice.

At the time, I wrote explaining that this would conceal laziness, ineffective approaches to instruction and disparities in education; and deny students/parents the information they need to select the best schools (Sunday Monitor 28th/1/2007, p.28).

Regardless, UNEB does not tell the public the best performers in its examinations. Unsurprisingly, the media does. Following the release of the results from the PLE examinations of 2010 on Friday 21st January 2011, for example, Saturday Vision, Saturday Monitor and Bukedde Lwamukaaga ran the headlines “Best and worst PLE schools: ranking of 10,000 primary schools’ performance”, “PLE best performers” and “Best 1,000 schools” respectively (on Saturday 22nd/1/2010).

Though the newspapers should be commended for filling the information gap created by UNEB, there are notable problems with the information that they supply.

First, the criterion they use to compare schools’ performance is plainly invalid. At primary and ordinary levels, the best schools are taken to be those with the highest number of students passing in Division 1 while at the Advanced level they are those with the highest number of students admitted to higher education institutions. This is misleading. Going by this criterion, for example, Bukedde Lwamukaaga ranked Mpererwe Primary School, which had 54 out of 258 candidates pass in Division 1 better than Aga Khan Primary, which had 42 out of 60 students pass in Division 1! Even if Saturday Vision ranked the number of students passing in Division 1 as a percentage of the total number of students from the school, it gives an erroneous impression that 2nd and 3rd Divisions don’t bear on schools’ performance. Consequently, the paper ranked 5752 schools as being in the same position—because none of them had a student in Division 1—so one wonders how a student/parent can use the ranking to select one school over others.

Regarding students, no method is identifiable. It seems the students reported as ‘best’ are not published on the basis of their grades but the odds they defied to put up whatever performance they put up or prominence of their parents/schools.

Third, the newspapers’ motivation for publishing the ‘best’ schools and students are suspicious. In Bukedde Lwamukaaga, for example, Vule (aggregate 7) and Nabaasa (aggregate 5) attributed their success to reading Pass PLE—a publication of Bukedde.

Accordingly, the information that the papers provide may not guide students/parents to the best schools. Rather, it may mislead them to poorly performing schools but which know how to teach many students but sieve out those that may not achieve Division 1, so that they record 100 percent division 1; steal students that are hoped to put up exceptional performance, and be reported in the media, from the schools that groomed them; neglect majority of their students and give a few promising students top notch support so that they make it to the best students’ pages; or publish edited versions of their performance, showing only those students that scored good grades. Notwithstanding, the media, and schools, have a right to report examination performance as they think fit. However, the pubic counts on UNEB to provide official information on schools’ performance, against which it can judge the authenticity of information from other sources. But UNEB does not provide this information. Why?