factors influencing the performance of pupils in upe schools particulary those in rural areas: a case study of kiduusu umea primary school, najjembe sub-county, buikwe district, uganda.

Description

After all these years of implementation of Universal primary education (UPE) in Uganda, quite a number of questions have been raised and in the quest to respond to some of them; particularly the factors that determine pupil performance in rural UPE schools. The researcher examined resource inequalities across homes, explored the trends in pupil performance in Kiduusu Umea Primary School (KUPS) over time, observed the lifestyles at school, held interviews with teachers, head teachers, pupils and members of the school community at the school. Such approaches enabled the researcher to access detailed information about the school and the classroom factors that influence pupil performance. Besides that, the PLE scores at the school were taken to be the reflection of pupil achievement in the school. To examine the pupils‟ achievement, the researcher focused on pupils‟ Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) scores in the school over time. Table 3 shows a summary of the performance of the pupils in PLE between 2011- 2014. The key issues which were generated include the following; the welfare and motivation of the teachers, teacher displine, teacher: pupil ratio, the nature of infrastructure at the school, irregular pupil attendance in school, the lifestyles at home and parents‟ attitudes towards education. During the study, it was realized that there is need for a better school feeding programme to be introduced such that pupils stop having porridge as food for lunch. Further research particularly about the thematic curriculum and the automatic promotion policy must also be conducted. External stakeholders like Non- governmental Organizations and other individual partners have to engage in sensitization programmes around the area in order to change the attitude of parents towards formal education in order to improve upon pupil performance in the school. On the other hand, the government has to put more emphasis on the construction and reconstruction of school facilities like classrooms, libraries, latrines, among others. The government also has to improve upon the central support offered to the management and supervision of schools and the district officials who run the UPE. There is also a need to guarantee more timely payment of salaries for the teachers as a way of motivating the teachers in order to improve upon the performance of pupils in the UPE system.