School-level 'gaming practices' — covert, systematic strategies through which school administrators manipulate learner registration, attendance records, and examination entry in order to inflate institutional performance metrics before national assessments — constitute a critically underexamined mechanism of learner exclusion in Uganda's primary education system. This study examined the nature, prevalence, and institutional determinants of gamingpractice-induced learner exclusion before the Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) in Uganda, focusing specifically on how such practices operate, which learner profiles are most disproportionately targeted, and what structural, socioeconomic, and institutional factors predict the probability of exclusion. A cross-sectional quantitative design was employed, using a structured questionnaire administered to 500 Primary Seven learners and recent school leavers from 30 purposively selected primary schools across rural and urban districts in Uganda. Data were analysed using univariate descriptive statistics, bivariate Pearson chi-square tests, and binary logistic regression. The study found that 42.8% of respondents had been excluded through one or more gaming practices, with the most prevalent mechanism being invisible withdrawal or de-registration from examination rolls (66.4% of excluded learners). Learners who had personally witnessed gaming practices were 16.8 times more likely to have been excluded (Adjusted OR = 16.8; 95% CI: 9.4-30.0; p < 0.001) after adjusting for school type, location, household income, parental education, parental advocacy, and class repetition history. Exclusion rates were highest in government schools in rural areas (81.4%). The study concluded that gaming practices constitute a systemic and structurally embedded violation of the right to education, disproportionately targeting the most economically and socially marginalised learners, and recommends urgent policy reform including mandatory independent audit of PLE candidate rolls, community-based accountability mechanisms, and strengthened child rights complaint pathways.