“Integrity is choosing courage over comfort”. Those words rang bitterly in one of the halls at Kiira Primary School in Jinja City where visibly upset parents and guardians learnt their children’s 2025 PLE results had been erased.
This after what was most feared came true that 66 Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) results from Jinja City were nullified by the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB)’s Security Committee on March 3, 2026, a move the city’s Education Officer Paul Baliraine Mugajjo described as “a bombshell” for pupils and parents preparing for secondary school placement.
UNEB said the decision followed investigations into malpractice tied to the manner in which the candidates answered questions. UNEB’s examiners saw it instantly, the 66 scripts ran word for word, angle for angle-too uniform to be coincidence.
Like they say, “a thief always leaves a trace”, and teachers have always warned in classrooms and here the trace was visible in identical sentences, punctuation marks and matching answer sheets.
The children, unaware actors in their headteacher’s pursuit of headlines and enrolment bumps, were not sophiscated enough to hide what their mentors had orchestrated.
In chasing unmerited fame dubbed “Operation Front Page” in Jinja’s grim slang, the adults left a paper trail and it is now the pupils and their parents paying the price.
Under the UNEB Act, the committee’s rulings are final: affected candidates will have to re-sit PLE in the next cycle, either privately or through another approved center.
The headteacher Ms. Rose Nakisige whose retirement age is just around the corner has vehemently denied any wrongdoing.
“ I do not know what happened but to the best of knowledge I did not involve myself nor asked any of my teachers to do so”, the unremorseful stress-faced and seemingly ashamed Nakisige defended herself against accusations.
The City Education Officer (CEO) Paul Baliraine Mugajjo told the 66 learners that the road back is practical: re-register, re-prepare, re-sit.
For Jinja’s education office, Mugajjo says the task is longer—rebuild confidence while rolling out teacher support tied to the competency curriculum and reminding parents that, in UNEB’s line, each case reviewed was “final” and aimed at integrity, not punishment.
At the Thursday’s crisis meeting attended by the school management and PTA executives, the affected parents broke down on wooden benches as Paul Baliraine Mugajjo told them plainly that UNEB’s decision was final.
“Whether you shed tears of milk or blood, the ruling doesn’t change—start planning to pay for another year,” he said, drawing gasps. There would be no appeals, no shortcuts, no miracle memo from Kampala.
Mugajjo defended head teacher Rose Nakisige against blanket blame but then privately admitted to some leaders what many have long suspected: collusion.
As the saying goes-rebuke in private, praise in public, Mugajjo appears ready to handle his head teacher, a 2029 retiree, the same way.
Trusted sources said the headteacher appeared to have struck the shoddy deal with UNEB invigilators and scouts—money passed, papers “guided,” answers relayed—so centers could claim news headlines and top‑of‑the‑class bragging rights.
In Jinja’s staff rooms they call it “Operation Front Page”: manufacture distinctions, drive enrolment, justify higher fees.
For parents, the calculus is cruel arithmetic. Uniforms bought, admission secured, siblings told their brother or sister was moving up—now deferred by a year and an extra fee they didn’t budget.
Behind this headline, Jinja’s Kiira Primary School 2025 PLE story now shares a chapter with Kampala’s, where dozens of results were also cancelled for malpractice.
Paul Baliraine Mugajjo says the city will tighten assessment and invigilation—competency‑based learning which cannot survive scout‑shopping and envelope‑mediated supervision.
But for the 66 children, the lesson lands at home: progress paused, pride dented, and a reminder that in Uganda’s exam economy, headlines sometimes cost a year of someone’s childhood.
Jinja Resident City Commissioner (RCC)Richard Gulume Balyainho had urged calm while UNEB weighed the case, now wants answers.
Following confirmation that 66 scripts were cancelled for malpractice, Gulume is asking the City Education Department via the Town Clerk Geoffrey Kiseka for a full report on how it happened.
The RCC has not named sanctions, but his request reads as a nudge to the Town Clerk’s office: look closely the headteacher and teachers involved and tighten oversight before more pupils pay for adults’ shortcut.
In a country where transparency and accountability live mostly in workshop PowerPoints and conference-hall pledges, nobody will likely be held to account.
Even deploying head teachers gets tangled in nepotism, favoritism and exchange of envelopes, an ecosystem where all players are fed and the vice is now normal. Try exposing it, as the media or a lone whistleblower quickly learn how fiercely the system defends its habits.
At The Exposure Uganda (TEU) we do not pretend a headline reform a system built on envelopes and silent nods, we just put the evidence on the table and let residents judge. We Expose, You Decide.
