By Ocama Ongwech Ali Abba IV
Parents in Uganda have become so obsessed with First Grade—which is not wrong in itself if learners’ potential is fully unlocked in educational institutions (nurture factors) and natural talents (nature factors) are harnessed to produce those results ethically—to an extent that, in many so-called “great performing schools,” the means of achieving those results have crossed all boundaries of academic ethical guidelines.
Some of these “super grade” students face real academic trouble in institutions where such unwarranted means are not provided and meritocracy alone applies. A close example is St. Daniel Comboni, Omyer, which has faced challenges with “super grade” learners from some high-performing primary schools that I may not mention.
Some super-grade learners from top schools in Uganda have faced greater academic challenges at universities—to the extent that average performers from low-grade schools end up helping them with assignments, or they resort to bribing university lecturers or academic registrars to change results. This begs the question of ethical discipline in academic examinations.
For instance, Makerere University at one point admitted strictly A students from top schools in the country. To their dismay, many of these same super-grade learners were terribly failing course units. This eventually forced the university to establish the current pre-entry examinations for students with at least 12 points and above.
The majority failing pre-entry exams are learners with super grades from super schools. This is just the tip of the iceberg. UNEB tried, in vain, to meddle in Makerere University’s decision. This shows some levels of connivance between these big schools and UNEB as the examination body.
Shockingly, too many parents now do not care about academic ethics because what they want is only First Grade or super results. Parents would rather take their children to schools they fully understand to be involved in examination cheating and, in some instances, personally aid the outsourcing of UNEB examination papers to enable their children to obtain “super academic grades.” They know this secures placement in elite schools and universities (both public and private), which ideally have an obligation to absorb learners on merit.
This cycle of ethically skewed education continues, and the end product is a disaster for national educational development.
Let it be known that academic brilliance or exceptionality must be real and evident in national progress in the natural and social sciences. When a learner scores highly, it implies a higher intelligence quotient (IQ). Such learners are supposed to excel naturally and become researchers, inventors, innovators, and academics of colossal stature. Truthfully, there are many who are naturally gifted academically and many who are not but have great potential elsewhere.
The grave effects of unethical education are that we end up producing, for instance, medical doctors who endanger patients’ lives; engineers who destroy public or private infrastructure through shoddy workmanship; lawyers who cannot win cases for litigants; and teachers who think they are great when they focus mainly on examinations rather than holistic education.
We must rethink our perception of First Grade and education at large. Super grades mean exceptionality, and this must be proven and beneficial to society. Naturally, not every learner is First Grade material. However, one may be First Grade material in music, art and design, athletics, football, history, geography, mathematics, languages, or computing.
The education system must harness these unique potentials or talents in every learner and translate them into opportunities for individuals and the nation.
As long as the education system continues to concentrate on examinations rather than holistic education relevant to societal needs, we shall continue to be packed with millions of First Grade robots without translating into national human-resource assets.
Japan and South Korea lack minerals but invested in human resources through quality education; this made their human capital distinct—a powerhouse of science, technology, invention, and innovation.
In a country where parents and the state press and invest in passing exams like Uganda, government creates educational inequality—what I normally term education apartheid—privatising and commercialising education for profit. Educational institutions, instead of focusing on holistically unlocking unique potentials in children, concentrate on the politics of passing exams without ethics. The end product is what we are witnessing as a nation: almost all learners fighting hard to pass with First Grade to increase chances of government jobs, forgetting that government can only employ about 1 percent of what educational institutions produce.
An education system that thrives must produce job creators, not job seekers. This remains far from reality due to the prevailing mindset.
The net results of this skewed educational priority are what we are witnessing: a boda-boda riding boom instead of scientific breakthroughs; an informal music industry characterised by drug abuse and hooliganism instead of practical, scientific agricultural development in homes and communities; the boom of eating places coined as “hotels” and salons instead of social and scientific research institutions breeding real solutions to national challenges.
The choice is ours—to pretend, or to face the bull by the horns.
The writer is an educationist and social commentator.
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