National IDs Authority Rolls out School Students’ Personal Data Registration

UNEB, together with the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA), on Tuesday, announced a nationwide launch exercise, at Uganda Media Centre in Kampala, in which they will register all learners in secondary schools.

The Ministry of Education and Sports has opened the Education Management Information System (EMIS) portal to enable schools to register learners via www.emis.go.ug

Dr. Peter Wakabi Waiswa, the UNEB Director for technology and reprographics, said the purpose of this exercise is to collect continuous assessment scores with effect from term one of the year 2023. He said that all secondary schools are required to register with UNEB to be able to submit the continuous assessment of the scores of their learners.

“One of the major components of the revised curriculum is continuous assessment and every subject has a component of continuous assessment, without which a learner shall not be graded in that subject at the end of the cycle,” he added.

NIRA Executive Director, Rosemary Kisembo, said NIRA will ensure each learner is issued with a National Identification Number (NIN) that will be used during the continuous assessment exercise, during the Uganda Certificate of Examination (UCE) and Uganda Advanced Certificate of Examination (UACE) examinations.

Kisembo said the EMIS portal will be open until January 31, 2023, to allow all schools to upload learners’ who were not uploaded by December 31, 2022.

“Schools which will not have uploaded learners’ data to the EMIS portal shall not be able to update the promotional or transitional status of learners in their schools”, she said.

In June last year, the Ministry of Education and Sports announced compulsory countrywide registration of all Senior One and Two learners in both public and private schools, for National Identification Numbers (NINS).

Dr. Dennis Mugimba, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Education, said the registration by the National Identification Registration Authority (NIRA) is expected to enable continuous follow-up and progress assessment of each learner through the education levels under the new O-Level curriculum roll-out plan.

Dr. Mugimba also said they want learners to get NINs because the number will identify them throughout their entire education system.

“By the end of the exercise, we are expecting to register 1.27 million learners based on the pass rate for the Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) of 2019 and 2020 where in 2019, we had 617,000 learners passing, while in 2020, we had 659, 000,” Dr. Mugimba said.

The lower secondary curriculum was rolled out on February 3, 2020, before the closure of schools in March due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Under the new curriculum, subjects were reduced from 43 to 21, and schools are expected to offer 11 compulsory subjects at Senior One and Senior Two in addition to one elective subject.

The students choose seven compulsory subjects at Senior Three but must exit with a minimum of eight subjects and a maximum of nine if they are to be graded at Senior Four.

Kiswahili, Physical Education, and Entrepreneurship Education have been made compulsory for Senior One and Senior Two students.

The government also integrated into the curriculum various subjects, including HIV/Aids, climate change, gender, patriotism, and human rights.