Relationship between school type and pupil’s mathematics achievement on the primary leaving examinations in Uganda

The purpose of the study was to examine relationship between school type and a pupil’s achievement on the Mathematics Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) (i.e., 7th grade) in Uganda). The study employed a cross- sectional survey design. Data were from the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) Primary Leaving Examinations results for the year 2018 (N = 903). Date analysis was done using a One-Factor Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). This was conducted to determine the relationship between a pupil’s school type (i.e., urban or rural, essentially school Social Economic Status [SES]) on the PLEs in Uganda, while controlling for pupils’ prior mathematics achievement/knowledge. The results indicate that there are significant differences between urban and rural schools on student Mathematics achievement controlling for prior mathematics ability. Specifically, the adjusted means indicate that urban schools have higher mathematics achievement on average (M = 4.68, SE = 1.9) compared to rural schools (M = 4.76, SE = .2.5). Note that the lower mean indicates better performance, and a higher mean indicates poorer performance on the PLE exams. (i.e., 1 is the highest score and 9 is the lowest score).