Lirya primary school children pose for a photo in July, 2013.

Six thousand eight hundred and thirty three pupils have passed the Primary Leaving Certificate in Central Equatoria state this year.

This number represents 79% of the pupils who sat for the exams.

The state Minister of Education and Instruction, Hastin Yokwe, said the number of candidates who sat for exams this year was over eight and half thousand.

“We had registered 8,997 initially but because of the impact of the war, the number of the students who sat for the primary leaving exams in the state were 8,651,” said Mr Yokwe.

“Out of this, 6,833 passed the examinations, representing 97% percentage of success. We expect that performance would have been better than this if was not because of the war.”

The highest grades are in religious education, science and the English language.

Mr. Yokwe attributed the weak performance of students in mathematics to the shortage of qualified teachers.

“I’m aware there were very few teachers for mathematics and sciences generally, so, most of this low performance is attributed to lack of qualified teachers teaching these subjects.”

He called upon professional science teachers who might have quit teaching over low pay to go back.

“Quite a number of professionals in the teaching and education, particularly in science, had moved to other institutions which pay better; we encourage them to come back or even be part time [teachers] whenever they get the chance to teach this subject which matters in the school so that we can be able to improve.”