By Bida Elly David
Private primary schools Central Equatoria state outperformed their government established counterparts, in 2023 examination results, released recently.
Many candidates from private schools exceled in Central Equatoria State’s announcement of the Certificate of Primary Education (CPE) results, on Tuesday.
According to the state education ministry statistics, 18,996 candidates sat for the primary eight exams where 17,896 passed, constituting 94.2%.
CES also registered statistics of 1,100 candidates who failed, making 5.8%.
On the general performance by gender, male candidates have outshined their female colleagues with 9,520 boys to 8,376 of girls.
Six private schools in the state have claimed the top grading hierarchy with Juba Christian Center Basic School (JCC) taking the lead in the state and also produced the best candidate in the country.
According to the state results, JCC tops with 94.1%, followed by St. Lawrence Academy primary school 92.5, Kampala Prime Junior P/S 91.3%, JCC Hai Negli primary school 89.9%, Salaam Nursery and primary school 87% and St. Peter primary school in Rejaf with 87%
Meanwhile, performance according to subjects saw Social Studies and Science to be the best performed subjects while Mathematics and Islamic religion were the worse performed.
According to observations, the performance of candidates in 2023/2024, CPE examination has increased to 94.2% as compared to 93.7% in the previous year.
Cirisio Zakaria Lado Befo, the state minister of education stated that the underperformance of the government schools has been impacted by huge turnover of teachers for greener pastures.
“Central Equatoria state has lost many teachers to private schools, companies and organizations due to the low and untimely payment of salaries from the government,” he noted.
The minister stated that they won’t have powers to stop those teachers from seeking better opportunities on the account that the salaries are indeed low.
“These private schools are dominating us because they have better pay, transport, other incentives and allowances compared to what government pays its servants, if at all we cater for all these I am sure our learners will boom,” he clarified.
He called on parents and teachers of students in public schools to engage their children in studies to compete with those in private institutions.
Lado emphasized that with the recent increment of teachers’ remuneration by 400%, the performance of public schools will improve.
Meanwhile, Luate William Alex the Director General at the state education ministry in addition to teacher deserting public schools for greener pasture learners in public schools also lack of concentration, peer groups and lack of pay.
“You cannot supervise a hungry person, our teachers are leaving and the majority don’t like the profession, we have training for teachers, Rombur, Yei teachers training Center,” he said
Furthermore, the director also argued that not all private schools performed well in the primary examination despite the hefty money they charged.
“Not all of them passed well, there are those that have not passed well, as a regulatory body, we are making our efforts through the ministry, parliament and partners to build the standard of public schools,” he stated.