SCHOOL PERFORMANCES
The recently released ‘O’ level
result has proven that there are huge inequities in Education for students
from Northern Uganda. Once again, this region has lagged behind in grade scores
which also show how the region is failing to produce people to compete in the
economy. The pattern has been consistent for the last several decades, in all
national exams; PLE, ‘O’ and ‘A’ level. I can comfortably predict that the ‘A’
level results to be released soon will follow similar patterns.
It is not that the district
education officers, parents and teachers in northern Uganda are not concerned
about the education of their children here. This consistent and chronic below
national average performances demonstrate lack of supportive infrastructure for
education. The education system is not about brand new classrooms, but it is
about many components such as having up-to-date laboratory and qualified science
teachers, having reading space and text books, having reading light and
supervision to complete homework and above all, a stable home with adequate
nutrition and rest period for students.
I have travelled in a couple of
secondary schools in Pader and yet none of them has science laboratory that can
meet national standards. The ratio of science teachers to student is
unimaginably large such that some teachers must teach more than one subject at “A”
level. I have found many committed teachers and concerned parents who are
helpless in these schools. Children are trying their very best, but the issues
here in our schools are more than what the schools, the students and parents
can fathom. All Secondary school exams require practical exams, if students
don’t practice regularly, they cannot compete nationally. This will affect
university entry and generation of science professionals in this region.
Teachers here lack housing and are
not being given housing allowances or incentives to retain them here. This
complicates the issue of quality teachers’ retention in northern Uganda. The
ratio of student to teacher is very astonishing across the board.
Here, teachers and students do not
have good reading environment and reading resources. Lack of light to study is
very harmful here. In some of these places, having electricity has become an unusual
experience. Many teachers here are out rightly uninformed about current
scientific advances and knowledge. You
can image how students’ curiosity to learn is pampered with outdated
information about the world. Here, there is hardly a computer and internet in
schools so learning is still very traditional.
Rural schools have very special
challenges that must be mitigated through a deliberate equalization policy at
national level. Education is a key determinant of health and a medium through
which national resources can be shared and utilized. A population which is
under educated has low utilization potential of national programs and suffers
from lack of innovativeness. Northern Uganda provides us with such a classical
situation which has also alienated the region from sharing in the
socio-economic transformation of society which the NRM regime brags about.
On an optimistic perspective, these
problems could be mitigated by enacting a national policy to provide for
incentives to retain teachers in rural districts and rural communities.
Teachers need to educate their children and to house them in decent accommodation.
I propose that children of teachers in rural schools who perform well should be
considered as priority for all foreign and local scholarships. I also propose
that decent accommodation and reading facility be built to serve a
school-community using solar energy facilities.
This will enable teachers to
share learning spaces with the community, so that teachers and the communities,
in which they serve, can learn from the same resources. It is important to
provide quality through encouraging teachers to develop personal learning goals
each year and to regularly provide refresher courses, especially in modern
modes of administering discipline without using the whip.
Significantly, each sub-county must
have an aerial secondary school fully equipped and often replenished with laboratory
ingredients where students can experience quality instruction. Ultimately, all
secondary schools must have sufficient science laboratory and science teachers
as requisite for licence. Given the
current trends, it will take northern Uganda over 100 years for it to realize
grade outcomes like schools in central and western Uganda.
END
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