TEACHERS' PAY
The imagination that teachers can earn decent salaries, live a comfortable life; drive a car, wear new clean clothing and shoes, build a house, or have properly fed children, continues to elude malicious minds. The teaching profession has been consigned to a very sorry place in society. This is unfortunate. As such, when Dr Kiiza Besigye proposed to pay primary teachers at least 650,000/= and their secondary counterparts at least 1 million Shs, many naysayers startled and heckled.
The plight of teachers in this country is a thorny subject, but the real fight to overhaul the humiliating conditions of the teachers, is one which has to be fought in the mind, first, and then on paper. It is a mental imagery thing, rather than affordability.
A robust education sector is a critical driver of any economy. The fast developing countries have discovered that a strong, well incentivized and competent teaching workforce, has the capacity to train the mind of visionary, innovative, and productive citizens. They have long invested in their teachers – in teachers' education and remuneration.
The real problems with the teachers of Uganda is no different than that of Police or Prison Warders. These groups have been socialized to the lower echelon of society and disadvantaged by their numbers, despite overwhelming workload and strenuous work conditions.
While Teaching is a noble profession, with specific body of knowledge and recognized Teachers' Colleges, the profession has continued to attract people of low school grades, and from impoverished backgrounds. In fact, lower school teaching, like Police and Prison services, are traditional reserves for unfortunate students whose prevailing circumstances prevented them from passing national exams or pursuing higher education.
One of the challenges is that only in developing countries like Uganda, do you find such a critical sector of the economy being driven by lowly educated and poorly paid workforce. This is the area where Dr. Kiiza Besigye has proposed an agenda to overhaul the conditions; to provide a clear path for professional development, from lowest possible education, to university degree and where possible, ensure that the minimum qualification for a grade teacher is at least a university degree; and to substantially reduce the teacher to student ratio to allow for effective classroom engagement. The KB campaign also proposes professionalizing the Police and Prisons Forces by establishing a Police and Prisons Foundation Colleges where officers have the opportunity for professional development pathways. These proposed changes will totally overhaul and depoliticize the civil workforce, transforming them into the honorable professions that they once were.
There is a problem with the current highly politicized civil workforce. Their problem resides within their Union leadership, which is also embedded within the ruling system. As such, every genuine efforts by teachers to demand for a change in their work and living conditions gets subverted from within, by political pandering.
As such, the current Uganda National Association of Teachers' Union (UNATU) leadership is defective in as far as making UNATU an appendage of NRM Party. First, they have tended to demand for improved conditions from the person of the President, not from government. This is a fundamental mistake that we have seen in their recent demand that teachers would not vote for Mr. Museveni if their demands were not met (DM: Nov 29, 2015). Improving Teachers' conditions shouldn't be a personal favor from Mr. Museveni. Since 2012, the government pledged to increase teacher's lowest pay to Shs 500,000 per month. Several budgets have passed without delivering this promise.
Further, pay is just one important condition that defines the teaching profession. The teaching environment and the tools to teach are equally as important. There is urgent need for system overhaul in the education sector – building new houses for teachers, ensuring that their children obtain free education, and allowing teachers to upgrade academically and to participate in research.
In these regards, I find that WesigeBesigye Campaign offers the best possible future for the overhaul of the education sector at institutional level, not as a personal gift. There are many experts that agree with his proposal as a practical, responsible and realistic public spending.
End.
No comments:
Post a Comment