The minister of education and sports Janet Kataha Museveni has this afternoon released the 2018 Primary leaving examinations results conducted on the 5th and 6th of November.
Speaking at the ceremony, the minister said she was proud that more girls registered for the examination as compared to their male counterparts.
A total of 672,923 candidates were registered from 13,072 centres. Of these, 346,963 (51.6%) were female while 324,963 (48.3%) were male. 1,128 of the candidates were pupils with special needs of various categories.
The minister says she is now worried why the male candidates are fewer.
“It is time also that we should wonder what is happening to the boy child. Because all these are our children and the whole struggle with the girl child has been to bring her to the level where the boys are. So one wonders whether the boys are now dropping out of school or whether it is a population demographics at play, we need to dig deeper and find out the factors responsible which should be avoided” the minister said.
Despite the increase in the number of female candidates, the boys still performed better than the girls.
Dan Odongo the UNEB Executive Secretary in his speech indicated that although few boys sat for the examinations, they out performed the girls.
"Even if there were few boys compared to girls who sat for the examination, they performed better. We had more boys with distinction ones compared to girls. Girls led from behind."
13.1 percent of the boys scored distinction ones, compared to 10.5 percent of girls. 42. 7 percent of the boys have division 2, 20.4 percent division 3 and 16.5 percent division 4 compared to girls with 40.6 percent, 25.6 percent and 16 percent respectively, according to the results.
Meanwhile, Mathematics was the worst done subject with only 77 percent of the candidates passing the subject.