First term for Senior One (S1) students in secondary schools will commence on February 17, 2025, the Minister of Education & Sports, Janet Kataha Museveni, said after the release of 2024 Primary Leaving Examinations in Kampala on Thursday, 23rd January 2025.
“The selection of S1 students will take place next week on January 30 and 31. I also announce that the first term for the new S1 cohort will commence on February 17, 2025,” the minister said.
Adding: “I want to call upon headteachers and School Management Committees to pay attention to the problem of learner dropout, especially those that have registered for PLE. We must look into this issue and understand why a learner who has registered to sit PLE, does not show up to sit the exams.”
Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) revealed that a total of 797,444 candidates from 14,883 centres (schools) registered for PLE in 2024 compared to 749,347 in 2023. Of this number, 524,025 (65.7%) from 11,451 centres were Universal Primary Education (UPE) beneficiaries, and 273,419 (34.3%) of the candidates from 3,432 centres were Non UPE.
In 2024, analysis by gender shows that 378,709 (47.5%) boys were registered compared to 418,750 (52.5%) girls, indicating that more girls than boys completed the Primary Education cycle. This has been the trend in recent years. The percentage was 52.3% for the girls in 2023 whereas for the boys was 47.7%.
“It is good to note that our Universal Education Policy, has enabled more children to attend school, as seen from the significant increase in candidature and the decrease in dropout or absenteeism, that is now at only 1.3 percent. This trend has been on a steady decline over the last five years, from a high of 1.8 percent in 2019,” she said of the free education government policy.
