Education Service Commission Secretary Criticizes Teacher Examinations in Nakaseke District

Dr. Asuman Lukwago, Secretary, of the Education Service Commission has lashed out at Ignatius Koomu, LCV of Nakaseke district for irregularly examining teachers in the district. Dr Lukwago made these remarks while appearing before Parliament’s COSASE committee on Wednesday morning.

Mr Ignatius Koomu shot to fame when he tasked primary school teachers in Nakaseke to sit for the 2023 Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE). According to Koomu, this exercise was part of a fact-finding mission to causes of poor performance in his district. Through this arrangement, the teachers sat for the exams in the subjects they teach and were subsequently examined and graded.

The exam that was sat by primary seven teachers attracted both praise and castigation from the public domain. Following the release of the results, it was discovered as to why mathematics was always the worst-performing subject in the district.

Out of nine teachers, a scary seven couldn’t score above 50% as the worst managed only 27%. Much as the best teacher scored 92%, there was a stark contrast between him and his colleagues.

With these developments, questions were asked of how one would expect students to excel under these circumstances.

Dr Lukwago’s view

It is with this background that Martin Muzaale (Buzaaya County) challenged the Education Service Commission Secretary on the issue as he appeared before the Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities, and State Enterprises.

This is because the Commission is mandated with appointing, developing, maintaining & improving the quality of all personnel in the education service.

However, according to Dr Lukwago, this arrangement was irregular as the rules of any exam require candidates to be alerted. With the surprising nature of the exams, Dr Lukwago believes it would have been hard to properly examine the teachers. Additionally, he believes that this could have contributed to the poor performance of the teachers who scored as low as 27%.

This was irregular, we align ourselves with what the Ministry of Education stated but our responsibility in terms of human resource for Education sector relates to secondary education and also tertiary institution, but we have a supervisory role on primary education system and this is where our mandate stops somehow. And from the professional side, these weren’t interviews but class room exams which were irregular and this was unusual and out of the normal process.

Dr Asuman Lukwago