This article first run in the New Vision of Friday August 6th, 2021
My fellow Budonians were upset, and rightly so, at the way this year’s schools examination results have played out. What really got their goat, and rightly so, was that King’s College, Budo was consistently ranked below upstart schools with ungainly names like Kitende, St Lawrence, Maryland, Manchester (really?) and others not so easily pronounced.
They had a point, of course, my venerable OBs. Those rankings published in the newspapers do not by any length portray the true quality of the students that sat those exams, they argued. And THAT anyone can play with statistics to show what they want, however farfetched that might be.
It is an uneven playing field, those UNEB exams. Take the total number of students (when did they become ‘learners’, by the way?) that sit for exams at any one school; the probability of getting more first grades increases with the total number of students that sit any exam. So school A with 1,000 candidates will definitely get more first grades than school B with, say, 300. So guess who will be on newspapers’ front pages as the best school in the land?
Because schools are now big business, it has been crucial for them to be seen to be among the best. To convince parents to choose their schools and pay their exorbitant fees, some schools will do whatever it takes. There are many tales of how some schools weed out the ‘weak’ from being candidates, and send them to other schools or other centres to sit exams.
They make sure only their very best are allowed to sit exams at their schools, and right from the word go, they train and coach them how to pass. Not to be good students, not to grow into good citizens, but to pass the exams. And to get those all-important headlines, so they can convince the next crop of parents to join their schools and pay their exorbitant fees.
In that rush for the bottom line, very little attention is paid to the students that actually sit form those exams. What happens after their smiling faces appear in the newspapers? What about the ones whose faces do not make headlines? What happens to them?
Recently there were reports that a student in Hoima committed suicide, because she did not get those all-important grades that make headlines. We do not know if there were other underlying issues, but if the grades had even a minute part to play in that teenage girl’s death, it is time to get very worried.
The media frenzy when exams are released has been blamed for putting undue pressure on students to get good grades. There have even been calls from Ugandan officials to ban that exercise (Uganda officials think the quickest solution to any problem is to ban something, or somebody).
But media houses run businesses, not charity organisations. And that frenzy when exams are released contributes greatly to their bottom line, especially when schools take out full-page adverts to showcase their ‘first graders’.
The newspapers are responding to a need, nay, an obsession, for children to get good grades. It is ironic that in a country where mediocrity is largely tolerated, and very often defended and praised, parents are obsessed with their kids getting good grades.
Someone said that today’s parents have largely absconded their roles in bringing up their children, and leave it to the schools to do so. They will pay the exorbitant fees, buy all the expensive uniforms and extras the schools ask for, including extra coaching; and in return demand that their children pass top of the class in the exams.
Newspapers have been accused of exploiting this obsession, but you should visit any premises when exams results are released, parents will come from far and wide, with their kids in tow, looking for that photo opportunity.
Will banning this (God forbid) stop the obsessions with passing exams? Not very likely, the parents and their kids will turn to whatever avenues are open to them, so will the schools. Maybe they will turn to TV, or social media influencers to get those important pictures out to there to society. What came first, the chicken or the egg?
One Budonian colleague argued that maybe we should go back to ‘basics’, the way it was done in the past, when kids privacy was respected and the emphasis was not on getting good exam results. But ‘those’ days, exam results were actually published in the papers by the Ministry of Education. Parents didn’t go to schools for results, or get text messages. They bought the newspaper and perused through for their kid’s results.
It has also been argued that schools are supposed to do a lot more than just teach kids to pass exams, that they should train and pass out well-rounded citizens.
The assembly lines that modern schools have become just churn out students that are willing to do anything, even cheat, to get those all-important top grades. Where does that leave the ‘traditional’ schools? Mainly middle of the table, that’s where.
Should they be worried? No, was the feeling among the Budonians. That Budo does not need their students smiling into the cameras every time exam results are released to attract prospective students. Or take out full page adverts in the newspapers to announce how good the school is.
For the record, every year many government officials and state lackeys rush to the hill, demanding places for their children. It has been estimated that almost 40% of the students that join Budo do not do so on merit, so the teachers and staff must be doing an incre4dible job to get them up to speed.
So the general consensus among the Old Budonians was to ignore that exam results frenzy, and leave it to the Kitendes and Lawrences and Marylands that need the hype.
kalungikabuye 