Authorities in the Central Equatoria State Ministry of Education have attributed the poor performance of public schools in the 2023 Certificate of Primary Examination (CPE) to insufficient funding of the ministry.
Addressing journalists on Tuesday during the official release of Central Equatoria State CPE results, Luate William Alex, the director general at the education ministry said the education sector is among those that are underfunded, thus it is unable to cater to many requirements.
He pointed out that public school teachers are not well paid compared to their private school counterparts, in addition, transport and welfare of the teachers are generally not catered for.
“Other components remain constant and they have not been able to be changed easily, things like accommodation for teachers within the premises of schools, logistics for the teachers, and other benefits that would have improved the livelihood of the teachers,” he said. “Again, notwithstanding the component of shortages of teaching and learning materials, excellence is a product of input in education. If we did not put sufficiently, you will not expect to generate sufficiently.”
According to the results, private schools in Central Equatoria State led in the 2023 CPE with a performance index of 94.2 percent, followed by government schools with 91.5 percent.
Luate however said the country is just recovering from cycles of conflicts and thus the budget is focused majorly on peacebuilding. He noted that despite the insufficient budget, government schools still face other challenging factors including the influx of refugees from Sudan and other countries.
“Education would have been better in government schools but when you look at the statistics, the government schools are even very few compared with the private schools and this is because the resources given to education is not enough,” he stressed.
Out of the top 10 schools in the state, six are private, led by JCC Model Primary School.
“But yet there are other factors such the increment in the number of births, the increment in the education services, the influx of people from Sudan and other regions who are here have impacts on the government’s capacity to handle or better support education, particularly in government schools,” Luate added.
A total of 18,996 candidates from Central Equatoria State sat the 2023 CPE and 17,896 passed.