The minister of Education and Sports, Janet Museveni wants to ensure that students use their national identification numbers (NIN) on academic documents.
This follows the upcoming mass registration of school-going children (age 5-15 years) by the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) that will commence on May 29 and end on June 25, 2017.
About 10 million Ugandan students (5-15 years) will return home with forms to be filled by their parents and attach a copy of their parents’ national ID card onto the completed form, reveals Gilbert Kadilo, NIRA Public Relations and Corporate Affairs manager.
Parents without national IDs have barely 30 days to acquire them.
Going forward, NIRA and the Education ministry want to ensure that students use the NINs on academic documents and at the time of registration for national exams like Primary Leaving Exams, Uganda Certificate of Education and Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education.
All registration shall be carried out at schools by the Registration officers from NIRA, assisted by the respective head’s of schools/ institutions.
This will go a long way in reducing the rampant cases of forgery of academic documents and impersonation and will also help the Ministry of Education establish the exact number of pupils and students in schools, and lead to budget savings through elimination of ghost students and schools respectively and enable government plan well for the schools.
NIRA is a body that was set up by government whose mandate is to create, maintain and operationalise the National Identification Register.
It has issued over 16 million IDs and is at the forefront of the Simcard reregistration exercise.
