In Pallisa District, education has two faces, and the distance between them is not measured in kilometres, but in commitment.
One side has Kings Kids Nursery and Primary School, which started as a Sunday school and, by God’s grace, grew and turned into a giant academic hub for Pallisa District.
Fifteen years ago, there was no Kings Kids. There was only a tree behind AGAPE International Ministries Church and noisy children who kept disturbing prayers that led Rev. Joshua Oriide, the Bishop of AGAPE Ministries International, to think it wise to keep them quiet by gathering them under that tree under the care of his lovely wife, Mrs. Immaculate Oriide, who started teaching them Sunday school.
That small class under a tree became a kindergarten, and that kindergarten became a school. Today, the school has been the best in Pallisa District for eight consecutive years.
Last year, 2025, Kings Kids presented 45 candidates for PLE, and 31 of them returned with Division One. In a whole district that produced only 98 Division Ones, a single school had produced a third of them.
This year, the school has 40 candidates, and the director, Mrs. Oriide Immaculate, has deployed twelve teachers to handle them, three teachers per subject, because she is targeting a 100% pass when results are released in early 2027.
In an exclusive interview with Daily Express after PLE, Mrs. Oriide, who disclosed the secret of making children of different backgrounds excel, said the pivot behind academic excellence lies in the hands of ethically committed teachers who have a calling of their profession.
She did not talk about money first. Instead, she started by thanking God, who is turning their family vision into the service of the community in many ways, including education, both formal and skilling programmes.
“Being in the top and maintaining of the district in performance is very challenging and calls for innovations that keep rebranding your product,” she says. “As Kings Kids, we kept on narrowing the gap between teacher-to-pupils ratio in order to have every pupil fully helped, basing on his or her pace of grasping concepts, and this makes a learner fully recognised.”
Mrs. Oriide said that, for consistency, Kings Kids school administration ensured no child is admitted until the parent brings 24 counter books, a dozen A4 exercise books, an Atlas, a mathematical set, and commits to pay for feeding and remedial lessons.
“The parent owns the school, the director only steers, teachers do their part and children are modelled to get knowledge and given enough to practise in form of 30 assessment tests drawn from other districts and renowned established schools,” she said.
While exposing her open heart in having Pallisa qualify to pass over 1,000 candidates in Division One, she advises fellow directors and headteachers to invest time in bringing parents on board to own their schools, and they only stay at the steering, scoring the objectives as derived from the school mission and vision.
However, at Ajepet Primary School in Gogonyo Sub-county, the story flows into a different river.
The classrooms are full, not with books, but with children. One teacher stands before 90 to 120 pupils, trying to be heard. The blackboard is there, but many pupils have nothing to write on.
The headteacher, Mr. Oduch Charles Richard, says parents have misunderstood the free education policy. They think free means a child can come to school with nothing, no 32-page exercise book, no uniform, no pen, because the government will provide.
“Parents have taken shelter of irresponsibility and have mistaken the government policy of no school fees payment to mean sending children to school without even a 32-page exercise book, no uniform, nothing at all, yet those are the items they are supposed to provide,” he says.
Mr. Oduch said the pain is deeper in lower classes because the single exercise book a child has doubles as a family medical record book.
“A pupil can come to school without a book and when asked narrates how it was withdrawn and taken to the health centre to be used as a medical book. So learning stops, not because the child refused, but because the book has become a hospital card.”
Mr. Orukan Isa, the headteacher of Omuroka Primary School in Kameke Sub-county, watches this and says private schools are not cheating; they are simply more committed, and their parents value education more.
“There is need for school managers to go for benchmarking in schools such as Kings Kids so that the mindset gets refreshed to do what they are supposed to undertake,” he says.
At the district headquarters, Senior Education Officer Mr. Opela Stephen ties the two stories together. He says schools should be venues for positive change that transform learners into agents of socio-economic development, but feeding is breaking everything.
A hungry child cannot compete, no matter how good the teacher is. He thanks those headteachers who have managed to bring parents back to provide lunch and scholastic materials.
And as thousands of PLE candidates who just finished their exams walk back into villages that are both friendly and hostile, he leaves them with a warning that flows like a father’s advice.
“I don’t want to hear of any bad thing happening to these candidates because they go out gatecrashing in functions, getting unwanted pregnancies,” Mr. Opela said.