Uganda; killing the future

Yesterday, I expressed my pain on facebook. I indicated that I was bored by the attention and glossing accorded to the senior four (S.4) exam results that were going on in the newsroom.

The attention accorded to the exams result is enormous and I appreciate it, but much of this energy was, as usual directed to what I think were trivial issues.

I must say a few of the stories are quiet interesting, stories in which, the students narrate the secret to their success. But this however leaves no space for real issues and has replaced critical and analytical writing.

A colleague commented, ‘Four more days to go… you will collapse of boredom.

The education system in Uganda is weak and to tell the truth, I worry for my Son. A troubling tendency of preferring a firefighting approach to deep problems is getting entrenched in the Ministry of Education.

Last week we saw the relaxing of cut-off points for entry into secondary school so as to absorb the fall-out from the high failure rate witnessed in the 2008 Primary Leaving Examinations.

This is worsening matters. It is an ill-disguised attempt to hide the real problem. Under the UPE scheme, government directed primary schools that pupil who fail examinations should not be asked to repeat classes.

The reasons, I must say are mainly political because the ministry has to provide the evidence that UPE, a pet project of the President, is a success–even if only in quantitative terms.

Statistics from the Education ministry indicate that currently, we have more than seven million children in primary school, which would have been a good thing. Unfortunately, most of these children have benefited from a programme whose dubious implementation has been clouded by politics.

The general education system is fluctuating. Makerere University has never recovered from the 2001 camping promise that saw the number of student increased over night from 2,000 to 4,000, this minus additional resource.

And every new project, such as the latest, political pet project-Universal Secondary Education is no different.

The decision by the government to close down a number of church-aided primary teacher training colleges almost a decade ago, unwittingly impacted the ability of the country to produce adequate numbers of manpower to educate young Ugandans.

In the intervening period, the few remaining teacher colleges have been under-facilitated and yet they are expected to deliver manpower for UPE. Quality has been sacrificed over the years to the extent that in large part the type of primary teachers made available through the system today is ill-prepared for the task.

And the ‘rationalisation’ policy has seen national teacher colleges that used to churn out diploma holders also take a beating on the grounds. The policy is to have secondary education carried out by graduate teachers.

Not a bad point if the ministry was hiring graduate teachers in numbers sufficient to handle the explosion occurring under the embryonic USE scheme.

The Ministry of Education has to return to the basics. It receives the highest budgetary allocation and 60% of this, goes to funding primary education. Money must be pumped into training of teaching staff while at the same allowing the professionals to inform education policy ahead of the politicians.

It would be calamitous if the government thought that relaxing of entry points is the solution. If that became the guiding principle, this country runs the risk of ending up with a midi Yorker labour force.