Who decides

The independent panel.

An award is only as trustworthy as the people behind the verdict. Praecip assembles the evidence; experienced educators do the judging, convened by us, but never controlled by us.

The panel charter

Four rules that keep the bench honest

Praecip earns revenue from some of the schools the panel judges. These guarantees are how a commercial company runs an award it cannot quietly tilt, and they are not negotiable.

Convened, not controlled

Praecip assembles the evidence and runs the objective scoring, then hands it to the panel. The verdict is theirs. We do not sit in the room to crown our own winners.

Blind to commerce

Judges score entrants without sight of a school’s subscription, advertising or any commercial relationship with Praecip. The wallet is walled off from the bench.

Conflicts declared

Every member declares any tie to a school in contention, governorship, family, employment, and stands aside from that category. Declarations are kept on the record.

Decisions recorded

Winners are agreed by deliberation against the published rubric, and the reasoning is minuted. A school can ask why it placed, and be answered from the record.

The members

Six seats. Named in May 2026.

The bench is built for range, assessment, school leadership, access and the economics of education, so no single lens decides what excellence means. For the inaugural cycle we publish the SEATS the panel must cover, not the individuals who will occupy them.

Three reasons we anonymise until nominations open: (1) the standing panel is contracted in May, so any name printed now would either pre-commit a real person we have not yet confirmed, or invent one we never will, (2) Praecip's data-integrity rule forbids publishing fabricated identities, the same rule that wraps every illustrative profile elsewhere on the site, and (3) the load-bearing claim is the SHAPE of the panel, who sits and what they cover, not the surnames. Names follow when the contracts do.

Seat

Standards Reviewer

Seat reserved for a former senior curriculum & standards official.

Seat

Assessment Researcher

Seat reserved for a university chair in educational measurement.

Seat

Pastoral Veteran

Seat reserved for a veteran head of a Ugandan girls’ secondary.

Seat

School Founder

Seat reserved for the founder of a multi-campus school network.

Seat

Education Economist

Seat reserved for an independent education-economics researcher.

Seat

Examination Authority

Seat reserved for a former national chief examiner.

How the panel works

From a record to a verdict

Read the full methodology

1
Review the evidence
Each entrant arrives as a single, comparable record, results, verification status and profile, compiled by Praecip, not by the judges.
2
Score and challenge
Members score against the published rubric, contest one another’s reads, and weigh the qualitative categories on documented evidence and nominations.
3
Confirm and record
The panel agrees winners and Highly Commended by deliberation. Each decision, and the reasoning behind it, is minuted before the seal is issued.

Sit on the panel

We are building a standing panel of educators, examiners and school leaders to judge the inaugural cycle. If you have shaped how Uganda goes to school, and can judge without fear or favour, we would like to hear from you.

Express interest