The Secretary of the Education Service Commission has castigated Ignatius Koomu, the LC5 Chairperson of Nakaseke District for ambushing Primary Seven teachers and subjecting them to an irregular assessment test.
In March 2024, Koomu forced the teachers to undertake tests following poor performance in the 2023 Primary Leaving Examination results, with Mathematics being worst performing subject.
The assessment showed that seven out of nine teachers tested failed to secure 50% of the mark with the poorest performing teacher securing 27% of the mark, while the best scored 92%.
While appearing before parliament’s Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE), the Commission Secretary Dr Asuman Lukwago told MPs that rules of any exam require candidates to be alerted.
He said this explained why some teachers scored as low as 27% in the test.
Lukwago was responding to a question raised by Buzaaya County MP Martin Muzaale about lessons the Commission learnt from the Nakaseke debacle since it is mandated with appointing, developing, maintaining and improving the quality of personnel in the education service.
Dr Lukwago argued that the results from the mock exams in Nakaseke cannot be relied on to determine the quality of teachers in Ugandan schools.
“The outcome of the examination aren’t reliable until we understand the standards that were used because examinations are set by people who are qualified to set them”, he said.
Dr lukwago argued that if one sets an examination just because they want to prove a point, they will set a difficult one on purpose.
“To be fair really, I have been in education, I wouldn’t imagine that an education should be like an ambush, it should be a conventional process. Everybody, you can invite these lawyers and say we want you to do this exam today, even if you bring them the exam from Law Development Centre which they passed, sometimes, the failure rate may be higher than when they did those exams. So for sure, it wasn’t fair but humans can also learn from unfair situations”, added Dr Lukwago.
