The Uganda National Examination Board Exam results often alert us to our social inequities

SOCIAL INEQUITIES

The Uganda National Examination Board, commonly known by its acronym UNEB is the statutory body that sets and marks national schools’ examinations at Primary, Ordinary, and Advanced levels of education in Uganda. UNEB filters much of the workforce or tertiary institutions-trained manpower in Uganda. For students, passing the UNEB exam is critical as failing it may also consign one as a societal failure in a culture where a white-collar job is the singular most crucial measure of success.

 The idea of standardized national examinations wouldn't be bad, and it has not been. The real problem is that UNEB exam outcomes have become one of the most reliable measures of social inequality in Uganda. It is also a profoundly reliable predictor of widening gender inequality.

 Children of the rich attend elite schools and pass UNEB exams by any means possible. Children of the poor attend not-so-great schools and fail UNEB exams, with, of course, a few exceptions who may defy the odds to perform well. This pattern of performance in UNEB exams has been the standardized script for decades.

 The aforementioned is not the problem of UNEB.

 UNEB is only a prism through which we are able to observe and analyze social inequities in our country. There are many other robust prisms to measure the materiality of our social inequities, whether in accumulated wealth, income source, employment opportunities, or the patterns of distribution of cultural, social, political, and economic resources.

 Thus, UNEB examination results often remind us that there is a profound endemic societal problem arising from the structuring of our society under this hegemonic social order under the NRM.

 Three decades ago, when UNEB released its examination results, newspaper headlines blossomed with success stories - individually and groups.  Every newspaper would rush to publish reports of best-performing students and schools from around the country. Then the inequities intensified and for two decades, the best-performing schools and candidates were from elite schools where the rich people send their children, in central and western Uganda.

 The best candidates from elite schools filled our front pages and the best performers from remote centers were celebrated as a footnote. Overall, the beaming faces of parents hugging their successful children and celebrating with them often captured the imagination of the nation.

 Until the high school fees' moments come beckoning, of course!

 But now things have changed.

 These days, newspaper headlines scream with the proportion of those students who flanked their UNEB exams in large numbers. 

 Something else caught my attention. For the first time in nearly thirty years, a newspaper headline now revealed to the nation that boys have performed better than girls. 

 Another observation of interest is that Ugandan newspapers are reporting on an exceedingly high number of students whose results were held on suspicion of cheating UNEB exams or being involved in examination malpractices. Leaking exams demonstrate how the fear of failing UNEB makes candidates and parents equally nervous!

 A standardized national exam, however, must have integrity.

 In Uganda's case, failing S4 and S6 defines the life course of many citizens. It is worst for those at the lower socioeconomic margins.  In other countries, there are options for adult education and various arrangements for one to redevelop a career after flanking regular schooling. In Uganda, failing UNEB exams endears one to the bottom of society.  Most progressive societies have abandoned national exams because not all those who fail UNEB are not good. We can agree also that UNEB has excluded some of the most brilliant brains in Uganda from achieving their full potential.

 It is also in Uganda where one has to produce their PLE, UCE, and UACE results even for a lowly automobile driver job or managing director of an organization. UNEB is still very critical and so must its integrity. 

Pay the high cost of school fees while government dances the liberal market trot dance

REGULATIONS

Before 1990, schools in Uganda were affordable. Parents had the means to educate their children through elementary and secondary education, while the government took the responsibility to educate the best-performing students in Universities and other tertiary institutions.

Then that changed when the liberalization of the economy took place. The government sold every asset it had and folded its hands in providing social services under the new socioeconomic formation - the market economy. The government scaled down on its obligation in all spheres of the social life of the citizens and strengthened its military muscles to protect the market.

Private schools started appearing to absorb excess students that the government was no longer paying for. Those students whose academic performances were not good enough for government sponsorship at high institutes of education also got absorbed. The advantage was that every child eventually had hopes of somehow attending school at a cost. The government embarked on withdrawing its full support to public schools and universities completely until the UN Millenium Development Goals convinced us that Universal Primary and Secondary Education are still critical for our civilization.

The street fights of the 1990s with Makerere University over the boom epitomised this radical departure of NRM from its initial ideas. The introduction of cost-sharing in tertiary institutions followed suit. These abrupt changes were nightmarish because most students who could not qualify for government sponsorship at a public university were actually smart kids. Most had studied in humbly remote schools and under very strenuous circumstances. Tertiary institutions were their hub and a stepping stone to rise to better future opportunities. In fact, if you wished to understand how the ordinary Uganda child struggled for success, spending time in teachers' colleges, allied health colleges, business colleges, etc would affirm such. You could see that most of these students were oriented to their facts with a unified vision to exceed the predicament.

Why are we now in this confusion where the government can no longer regulate school fees and standards of education?

Often, we are told to put our mouths where we put our money!

The appealing ideological cornerstones of the NRM faded and became stale somewhere about 1996. At that time, Ugandans had experienced a fundamental change in the NRM character.

Uganda’s resentment of him was the 1996 Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere (RIP), running alongside Hon. Cecilia Ogwal. Clearly, Museveni was at an ideological crossroads which he fully understood but had no shame to relent. He had abandoned his original Pro-Africa or Pan-African economic policies stance and hobnobbed in bed with the West. He had swallowed the neoliberal marketization seed.

We say that there is a forest in every seed. The neoliberal economic policies that Museveni swallowed in 1989 have now produced the forest of inadequacies, corruption, extreme social inequalities, and inequities of contemporary Uganda.

If the government can regulate your life, and even take it away, how can it possibly fail to regulate school fees? The response is that Museveni and his government are trapped in the web of an exploitative global neoliberal economy – the mobile and exploitative phase of capitalism that commands an unhinged liberal market and a reduced influence of government (anti-statism) in the affairs of the market.

For the avoidance of doubt, when the government reduces its funding to schools, most schools fail to meet their basic operational costs. As such, they must charge students more to be able to operate and perform. With the ongoing post-COVID-19 inflation, schools – public or private – will demand more from parents and the government will continue to do the neoliberal trot dance while looking the other way.

Government is helpless and indeed, cannot effectively regulate any sector if it cannot control inflation or doll-out tax-payer money to subsidize gaps in school expenditures. The high burden of school fees is one sign that we, the people of Uganda, are on our own. It affirms further that the government is not the government of the people anymore; it is the government of the liberal market economy. Thus, it is the market economy that regulates it and not vice versa.

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