Who Can Dare to Dismantle Uganda’s Education Colonial Framework?

The national celebration over the newly released Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) results in Uganda - formerly the Certificate of Primary Education - had a familiar, hollow ring this year. 

Across the country, headlines celebrated top performers from elite, urban private schools, their faces beaming alongside proud proprietors. 

But in the shadow of this fanfare lies a truth as unyielding as the colonial-era brick of the nation’s oldest institutions: the education system is designed to create a select few, leaving the majority to navigate a world it hasn't prepared them for.

The story isn't about the 69,000 students who achieved Division One; it’s about a system tracing its roots directly back to the 1925 Phelps-Stokes Commission Report. 

That report laid the foundation for an education model centered on rote memorization and high-stakes, eliminationist examinations - a gatekeeping structure intended to produce a small, compliant administrative class for the colonial government. 

Today, over six decades after independence, the structure remains largely unchanged.

Take the case of Mugisha, a bright student from a Universal Primary Education (UPE) school in Masindi. He secured a respectable aggregate 18 - a pass, but not enough to comfortably enter one of the coveted ‘A-list’ secondary schools. 

His teachers, underpaid and burdened, focused the entire final year on teaching to the PLE test, a curriculum heavy on theory but almost entirely devoid of the practical, vocational skills that could transform his life on his family’s small farm.

Mugisha’s result is a miniature national tragedy. The UPE system, while increasing access, has been captured by the conservative examination regime. Teachers are incentivized to produce exam-takers, not critical thinkers or innovators. 

The subjects, the pedagogy, and the rigid grading system are a direct echo of the 1950s, prioritizing academic ‘purity’ over contextual relevance.

The PLE results, therefore, are not merely a measure of academic success; they are an annual census of the system's inherent elitism. Those who fail to make the cut - a vast majority - are collateral damage in a cycle where access to quality education is inextricably linked to wealth. 

Until Uganda’s policymakers dare to dismantle the colonial framework and infuse the curriculum with genuine local relevance and practical skills, each new batch of "successful" PLE results will serve only as a reminder of an empire that has long since departed, but whose educational architecture still dictates the nation's future.