By Lubwama Absolom
Table of Contents
Parents and candidates experience some anxiety each year when the Uganda National Examination Board releases the results at all levels like PLE ( Primary Leaving Examinations) , New Lower Secondary Curriculum ( NLSC ) and Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education ( UACE). This is followed by a plethora of suggestions and ideas that occasionally make it to Uganda’s parliament. Parliamentarians put on a witty show, but their opinions stay at rhetoric.
There wasn’t much of that drama this year, aside from the customary media coverage of “best performers,” which some observers believe is a marketing ploy by schools that pay journalists to highlight their schools as top performers when in fact they weren’t.
Students who take exams in the year before elections have outperformed previous years at the primary leaving examination level for the last four Ugandan election terms. The 2025 PLE contenders followed suit.
A New Subject at PLE , An Old Debate
Using the occasion, the Ministry of Education announced the addition of Religious Education and Swahili as distinct subjects for the Primary Leaving Exam. They reasoned that as we strive to integrate the East African community, Shwahilli would facilitate regional communication.
However, the justification put forth for religious studies—that is, to instill morality and humanity in the next generation—concerned some of us.
Starting with young Africans is the most effective way to brainwash them into submission and following the colonizers’ line. The most cunning way to trap them is to use religion as a test to advance to a higher level of education. Are we not increasing the number of people who are mentally enslaved and have no way out? We’ve had enough complaints about colonial education, which turned students into “job slaves” by preventing them from thinking beyond what they were taught. What would happen if they were taught not to question their spirituality?
What would include religious education because many Ugandans tend to limit religion to the “Abrahamic religion and have the bible or Quran has life instructing manuals which they are likely to use as a guide in formulating the syllabus of religious education given the past experience and what constitutes as religious education which is currently part of social studies at Primary school level.,
Morality, Hypocrisy, and the Question of Content
Given the scandals involving religious leaders in the nation and around the world, such as Christian evangelicals deceiving American presidents G.W. Bush to attack Iraq and now Donald Trump to attack Iran in order to fulfill their self-imagined end-time prophecies, are they a good example to believe that religious education would instill morals in our children? Would Islamic and Christian doctrine be followed, or would it include African spirituality? Will a leaner be given an opportunity to think beyond what is put before them?
Will they follow the same line in the secondary school?
This brings me to issue of Parents who got excited about the new “O-level” results. The curriculum, which seems to fit in with the times. For the first time,most of the candidates who sat for these exams performed better than they had anticipated.
This excited many parents into abandoning the notion of “vocational training” and instead enrolled their children in “A-level” with the goal of earning a bachelor’s degree.
A Curriculum In Practice: The New O-Level Reality
Parents are pleased with the new curriculum, but students struggle to apply what they have learned. This is the time when the government should conduct an audit, the of the new curriculum. Otherwise, we are likely to revert to the old pattern of students cramming to pass exams and then forgetting everything they learned because they can’t apply it in real life.
Nowadays, graduates in a variety of fields find it difficult to put their academic knowledge to use in the real world. Their only choice, given the scarcity of employment opportunities, was to travel to the Middle East, where they labored as slaves, with some even going so far as to become sex slaves in order to make ends meet. These jobs are ending indefinitely due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, which is causing panic.
Any parent who sends their kids to school believes that the government will provide them with jobs. In Uganda and other parts of the world, parents are either daydreaming or preparing their children to become “job slaves.”
Beyond the Classroom: The Parental Duty
These days, a university education helps some people find employment, but it also helps others get exposure to their area of interest, blend in with peers their own age, and serve as a family planning tool to prevent adolescent parenting. The graduation ceremony serves as the “initiation ceremony” into adulthood, signifying that the individual is now prepared to leave home, begin a family of their own, and take care of themselves. This means that in addition to the government-tailored education system, which has regrettably become a standard indicator of intelligence, parents have an obligation to teach their children survival skills, morals, and to recognize, support, and develop their talents.
Leaving that task to the government is no different from entrusting your newborn to a babysitter to make decisions about their upbringing or a school bus driver to pick them up at your house at 5 a.m., transport them to school at 8 a.m. study up to 4 p.m., and the van driver drops them home at 8 p.m.( they are notable for driving recklessly only rivaling bodaboda riders in that respect) Or enrolling your four-year-old child in a boarding school, visiting them once on visitation days, and being bothered when they return for holidays. If anything goes wrong, you are complicit in this child neglect. We have a responsibility to raise our children in proportion to our means.( May God help us raise a more responsible generation free from mental slavely)
