Title: My Camera, My Life
Author: Sir Mohinder Dhillon
Pages: 689
Publisher: Mkuki Na Nyota
Price: Shs 153,000
Available: Aristoc Booklex

Why should you read Mohinder Dhillon's autobiography My Camera, My Life? Dhillon is one of the most remarkable men you have never heard about. His life reads like an adventure story.

Here is a man who was born in India in 1931, made his name in Africa in the 1960s, and was successful enough to be on first name basis with world leaders in Europe in the 1980s.

Dhillon's life and achievements are more astonishing when you realise that he did all this with very little formal education. He failed his Ordinary Level exams and stumbled into a journalism career after his father fortuitously bought him a second hand Box Brownie camera in 1948.

Dhillon did not even intend to become a photojournalist. His ambition, at the beginning, was to be a successful studio photographer.

He wanted to make enough money to earn a living so he did not continue to drain the meagre resources of his struggling father who was a clerk in the East African Railways and Harbours Corporation. The third born of seven children, he was terrified of bringing disgrace to the family by failing to earn his own upkeep.

His father Tek Singh had left their tiny, poverty stricken village Babar Pur in India in 1918 at just 17 years old for Africa to work on the East African railway.

He had arrived with nothing in his rags at Mombasa, Kenya; slept on Sikh temple verandas, and worked for twenty-nine years before he could afford to send for his growing family to live with him in Nairobi in 1947.

Sikhs by faith and a very tightly knit family, men were expected to go out and fend for their families. Dhillon was haunted by the sacrifices his father, uncle and female relatives had made.

He refused to fail. Employed by Halle Studio in 1951, this school dropout without formal photographic training would buy out his employer in three years.

And then Dhillon was off! For the next forty-seven years, Dhillon was at the scene of most historic events in Africa and some of Asia's and Europe's. He filmed the painful emergence of Kenya from British colonial rule in the 1950s.

His Black Man's Land, available on YouTube, maybe the earliest filmed record of Kenya's bloody struggle for independence and troubling aftermath.

Dhillon filmed and photographed the start of Ugandan president, General Idi Amin Dada's rule in Kampala in 1971. He also filmed Amin's downfall in April 1979, actually witnessing his desperate last flight out of Uganda forever from Jinja in a Libyan Bell twin-jet helicopter.

In between, Dhillon got close enough to Amin to end up liking the man personally even as he reported on the murders committed in his name.

Dhillon's book, published in 2016, is one of the few on record that admits to the role of foreign media in crafting Amin's lasting image as the ogre of Africa. Dhillon is fascinating on Amin. Scholars of this unforgettable African leader will find My Camera, My Life invaluable.

But Amin is not the only African president Dhillon had extensive contact with. He was once the official photographer of Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie. Dhillon's Afripix Company (as he had renamed Halle studio in 1961) would document Selassie's international travels from 1966 to the meek dénouement of his reign on 12th September 1974.

Dhillon writes of Ethiopia with more fondness than many other countries he reported from. The graciousness and suffering he witnessed in an Ethiopia continually wracked by famines and drought would crack through his journalistic impartiality.

Dhillon was one of the several journalists to report consistently on Ethiopia's devastating 1980s famine. Their combined journalistic efforts would result in a global movement in 1984 to fundraise for Ethiopia's famine relief.

Nineteen years later, Dhillon would receive a knighthood with the title Sir from the Imperial Ethiopian Order of Saint Mary of Zion in 2005. The award came four years after his retirement from active journalism in 2001 at seventy.

My Camera, My Life by Mohinder Dhillon is an invaluable book. Beyond a memoir of Dhillon's own very adventurous life, My Camera is an eyewitness account of some of the 20th century's most significant historic events. A student of Africa could not find a richer resource.

“Anansi must choose between two favorites: hiding from rain, and playing with big dogs. 

The big dogs beckon. Rain has not yet begun. When the rain begins to fall, shelter is close by. Perhaps just a few minutes outside with Chaos and Mayhem will be safe.  Staying close to home is wise.  Anansi will not have far to run when the weather goes bad.”

“Anansi self-negotiates and self-compromises.  Finally, Anansi heads out with Chaos.”
“Anansi soon forgets the negotiations and the compromise and the fear.  When Mayhem joins the game, Anansi thinks of nothing but the sport of romping dogs. 

These giant friends provide a tunnel through Anansi’s fear.  These friends provide a bridge over inaction and indecision.  Friends provide distraction through a storm.”

“The three dogs run and chase.  Anansi rolls in the damp grass beneath the gray sky.  Anansi runs in the sharpening breezes.”
“When the rain finally comes, Anansi does not notice the wet.  Anansi’s fur mats.  Water drips from Anansi’s ears and nose.  Anansi plants toes into the damp earth to leap onto the big dogs.  Anansi forgets all but the play.”

“Chaos and Mayhem decide before Anansi to quit and take shelter from the falling water.  Anansi stands in the downpour and watches them retreat.  Anansi wants to continue playing in rain.  Anansi had not known the fun to be had in a situation previously feared.”
Uncle Junior pauses.  The boys think.

Isabella is the first to speak.  “It rained yesterday.  Will another storm come?”

“Yes,” Uncle Junior smiles at the bright little girl.  “And Anansi will fear again.  Anansi will want to seek shelter and hide during a storm.  But I predict that Chaos and Mayhem will find Anansi again.  Those giant friends will return to stomp down Anansi’s fear and entice Anansi to the good times.”

“When the next storm comes, Anansi must choose between safety and Chaos.  Anansi must choose Mayhem or comfort.”
Dingo Pingo speaks up, “Those are false choices.  Through Chaos and Mayhem, Anansi discovered that safety was just another word for fear.  Anansi chose Chaos over fear.  Good choice, Anansi!”

anansi99@hotmail.com

Recently, the education ministry’s permanent secretary, Alex Kakooza, directed that the sector would not allow schools to increase tuition fees whenever they feel the need to do so.

However, Kakooza’s directive is not new. It has been made several times before, and is often dismissed as mere talk by state bureaucrats.

In the meantime, parents continue to bear the brunt of annual tuition fee increments, often without explanation from school heads, some of whom look at learning institutions as financial investments, from which they should earn a profit.

The ministry has declared that schools should be considered learning institutions, operating for the common good, with profits as an incidental benefit to investors.

Ministry officials are capable of tasking schools to maintain reasonable tuition fees in keeping with the general standard of living. Under the Education Act of 2008, they can issue notices, warnings or mete out punitive measures, with a withdrawal of the license being the extreme.

However, some of the officials supposed to take care of these issues have been reported to be investors in the same schools, which raises a conflict of interest in the matter.   

Consequently, parents can only grumble and look for the extra funds, or shift their children to less-expensive schools, which occasionally translates into poor academic performance.

Thus, it was a surprise to many parents and school heads last week, when the permanent secretary cleared his voice and vowed to ensure that no school would hike tuition fees without notifying his office this year.

The parents are quietly hoping that he means what he says, but while the schools are concerned, they hope it may be more of the same. It is up to Kakooza to convince the public that he should be taken seriously this time round.

school@observer.ug

The Katikkiro of Buganda, Charles Peter Mayiga, has assured parents that the kingdom will continue focusing on vocational education. 

“Buganda government will continue vocational education to enable the youth acquire skills and be creative instead of seeking employment,” the Katikkiro said during the 11th graduation of Buganda Royal Institute of Business and Technical Education at Kakeeka campus in Mengo.

“I urge you to be mindful of their obligations in order to secure their future,” he said.

During the ceremonies, 1,380 graduands received certificates and diplomas in various disciplines. Of these, 821 were female while 559 were male. Two of these were deaf graduands Grace Nakiyemba and Shellina Naturinda, who were supported by the Julia Lule foundation. Mayiga commended the foundation for supporting students with special needs.

The institute principal, Anthony Wamala, reported to the congregation that performance had improved over the previous year. He attributed this to increased support from the kingdom and the staff.

Wamala also introduced the new computer lab, which was inaugurated by the Katikkiro. The laboratory will see the stock of computers at Buganda Royal Institute rise from 50 to 220, enabling more students access classes, particularly those on evening studies.

The Katikkiro handed over an innovation award to two students: David Kayima and Peter Kiyemba.

Kiyemba produced an electric wireless remote control system that can be used to run radios and television sets. On the other hand, Kayima developed a stationary battery-powered bicycle that can be used in the gym.

milcahronah@gmail.com

District education officers (DEOs) in Busoga have vowed to redeem their region and improve performance in the next primary leaving examinations (PLE), following a dismal showing in the latest results.

This followed a statement by the Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) which showed that most of the top ten poorly-performing districts were from Busoga. These include Kaliro, Iganga, Buyende, Luuka, Namutumba and Mayuge.

Jinja’s DEO David Nabeta opened up by telling The Observer that he was not satisfied with improved performance over the last year and pledged even more effort to do better in 2017.

“Passing does not refer to having many first grades alone but also minimising Division Us and Xs to admit more students at secondary level,” Nabeta said.
“The recently-introduced thematic curriculum has stirred up education in rural areas where pupils are taught in their mother tongue before adjusting to English, such kids understand and can easily interpret examination queries.”

He cited the rural communities of Butagaya, Kakiira, Buyengo and Busede as the most improved, despite being more popular for sugarcane growing. Nabeta added that more would be done to eliminate the number of children failing the PLE.

He concluded that parents engaging their children in child labour would be arrested. For her part, Mary Kadondo, the head teacher at Buyuze primary school in Luuka district, blamed the poor results on hunger.

“Parents are failing to contribute 3kg of maize per term to feed their children, and whenever a teacher explains a point, most pupils are yawning,” Kadondo said.

She urged parents to rethink their priorities and ensure their children have something to eat at school. The call was echoed by Davis Isoota, a head teacher at Kamwilungu primary school in the same district.

“We have advised parents to pack at least a potato for their children, more so those in lower primary,” he said. 

However, Luuka DEO Moses Galandi attributes the poor performance to child labour due to the mushrooming sugarcane industries and vowed to fight the vice.

“Our children are being lured to work in these sugarcane factories that are sprouting up everywhere at the expense of their own education … this will not be tolerated,” Galandi said with finality.

He also charged parents to support their children in their learning. “Our parents have a bad attitude to their children’s performance in schools and pupils in turn relax since no one outside school cares.”

In Mayuge, the area DEO, William Nadiope, pledged stringent efforts to end child labour.

“It is true there are laws prohibiting child labour in our communities but we need to apply them more effectively to improve learning in Busoga,” Nadiope said.

In Buyende, the district police commander, Muhammad Kirumira, vowed to arrest all parents who fail to take their children to school.

“Buyende will not continue performing poorly because parents want pupils to clear their shambas,” he said with finality. “At the beginning of next term all those who fail to take children in these free UPE schools will be arrested and serve as examples to the rest.”

Poorest-performing districts in the 2016 PLE

wambuzireacheal@gmail.com

Education state minister Rosemary Sseninde has urged youths to stop waiting for handouts from government and politicians but embark on activities that will generate income for them.

Sseninde says that even without formal education, one can be productive.

“The youth should stop “Gavumenti etuyambe” [Government help us] syndrome and the kagwirawo mentality, but be patient and work hard,” she said. “They should stop despising  jobs; even the Bible says one has to work before eating and that is what I want to tell you.”

Sseninde’s call came as she presided over a graduation ceremony for fellows of the Building Tomorrow leadership programme.

“You understand that the ministry of Education and Sports has a programme called ‘Skilling Uganda; so, even without formal education one can get skills that would help them since the country is grappling with unemployment,” she added.

The fellows were trained for two years on what is called creating a participative, supportive classroom and school environment. At the ceremony, 10 students were awarded certificates.

Joseph Bagambaki, the country director of Building Tomorrow, welcomed the minster’s call to stop the begging and running for quick money.

“Those youth with skills that are unused are to blame, the youth have a begging syndrome yet the very youth should be innovative. Change should start with colleges which must overhaul the curriculum,” he said.

On the fellowship programme, Bagambaki explained that the project is designed to enable the fellows work with head teachers, teachers, parents, children and school management committees to improve learning.

“We give skills in personal instruction, organizational and social leadership; we believe well-trained leaders can be the heart of qualitative change within government schools,” he said.

“By recruiting recent graduates for the fellowship programme, we aim at tapping the energy of Uganda’s youth and develop the next generation of leaders with limited resources.”

Bagambaki further explained that by engaging directly with schools, communities and local leaders, the programme provides platform to Ugandan youth to make significant impact on the education system.

justuslyatuu08@gmail.com

Makerere University’s Resilient Africa Network (RAN) has struck up a partnership with Puliida, a local NGO, to provide legal support to students who innovate.

Launching the partnership last week, RAN’s director for innovations, Dr Dorothy Okello, was pleased that lawyers were able to find an affordable way to work with innovators.

“Innovation is a journey from that brainwave that leads to the development of an idea to something one finds in a market,” she said. “We are pleased to be able to work with legal minds to protect this ideas … we already have 78 innovations here.”

The executive director at Puliida - Lawyers for Agriculture and Climate Change, Moses Mugisha, explained that the partnership would involve individual lawyers offering a few hours of their time to support innovations at an affordable cost.

“What we are doing here is to provide legal advice and support pro bono [free], but where some cost is required, it will be minimal.”

He added that lawyers from at least two firms had agreed to support the partnership and more were being consulted. These are Musangala and Company Advocates as well as Owoyesigire, Kaggwa and Company Advocates.

“In future we hope that the law society can help set up a consortium of law firms prepared to offer affordable legal services,” Mugisha added.

The launch was preceded by a session in which nine lawyers gathered at the RAN offices in Kololo to offer legal advice to some of the student innovators at the centre. 

Most were concerned about how to protect their inventions from plagiarism and infringement by others, or what it would cost to protect sophisticated applications.

“How do we protect our ideas from our counterparts if we work together than separately … if someone can always snatch your idea?” one asked.
“What about if the idea is similar but the computer code that makes the application is different, how do I protect my idea?” asked another.

“Can one obtain a patent for raw materials?

The lawyers responded with advice on how to register their patents in time and how to avoid problems.

”If you are working as a group and then one splits, you can sign a no-compete agreement, where the party leaving cannot use your ideas in competition against you,” one lawyer said.

“Sometimes innovators are too quick to settle out of court for some money, which makes it hard for precedents to be set, by which future cases will be decided,” Dr Kabumba Busingye, another legal mind, added. “Sometimes it is better to suffer a little and make a bigger benefit.”

mtalemwa@observer.ug

Education Minister Janet Museveni has pledged to push for increased access of schooling for all Ugandan children.

Her pledge came at the end of her visit to the Education World Forum (EWF) in London. The EWF is the biggest annual gathering of education ministers across the world, offering insight and inspiration from leading education pioneers, policymakers and education experts.

“It has been a very informative visit for me. I will return to Uganda full of ideas to further develop and push our priorities in education so that all children in Uganda are able to access good-quality education. The education of Ugandan children is key to our future prosperity,” the first lady said.

During her visit, the First Lady and minister also visited a secondary school in inner-city London, where she learned how increased autonomy, innovative financing and great school leadership can improve learning.

She later met with ministers from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department for International Development (DFID) to discuss the UK-Uganda partnerships.

In 2016, DFID Uganda launched its new education programme which will support over 300,000 Ugandan girls and boys with a decent education over the next five years. DFID is prioritising its support to ensure more girls and boys have access to good-quality education in state primary schools and also improve their learning.

DFID will also work with the ministry to improve public-private partnerships at both secondary and pre-primary schools so more children can attend school.

The head of DFID Uganda, Jennie Barugh, urged Uganda to find new ways of improving learning.

“It is so important that Uganda looks for new ways to enable more children to be able to go to school and learn. This will help them have a brighter future. Through our new education programme, DFID aims to work with the Government of Uganda to do just that,” she said.

There is something about the January sunshine at Makerere University. It has been beating down mercilessly every day since last Monday.

It is also the same Monday that the Makerere visitation committee set aside as the date for the start of a massive headcount to determine how many students are actually enrolled there.

Initially, Dr Abel Rwendeire, the head of the committee, had ordered  that all continuing students should only present their university identity cards (IDs) with original admission letters, while their first-year colleagues were requested to present registration forms, admission letters and either national identity cards or their former school IDs or both.

However, for continuing students, the requirements were, for still unclear reasons, reduced to only university IDs. Students were asked to line up and present their original registration documents to a four-member panel, in each college. The panel comprised one member registering those in the queue, two members to verify the documents and a final checker.

As expected, the queues snaked all over the campus, with students grumbling over the nature of the headcount.

GRUMBLING

The queues raised lots of complaints among the students, many quarreling about the failure by the university to find more modern ways to carry out the headcount. On a few social media platforms, some students sounded out Dr Rwendeire, that there were more modern means of carrying out the headcount.

But Rwendeire would not budge, arguing, instead, that the exercise would help them in establishing the actual number of students and staff.

“We have made this exercise very flexible to allow students come at any one time within these three weeks,” Dr Rwendeire said. “We are doing this now so that we don’t have to do it again.”

Standing in the queues, one could hear many students arguing that the university already knew their actual number and recounting them didn’t make any sense.

As the sun shone brighter, others blamed their woes on what they saw as the poor administration of the vice chancellor, Prof John Ddumba-Ssentamu.

“When you come to the university, you are admitted first and obviously you get counted,” said Felix Bwikizo, a third-year student of Journalism and Communication.

“Every year there is an internal audit here; how can they audit the university without knowing the actual number of students?” A week on, Bwikizo is still contemplating about whether to go for the process or not.

But the guild president, Roy Ssembogga, defended the process, saying it will partially solve the problems at Makerere. He urged students to embrace it by turning up in large numbers so that they can be counted.

A university lecturer, Dr Stella Nyanzi, who is on suspension from the university on grounds of gross misconduct, weighed in on the debacle. She argued that it is a shame that Makerere can call for headcounting.

“What is the use of records and databases? What is the use of all the lists developed from pencil pushing tasks of admission, registration, daily attendance lists, exam lists?” she said.

“How is it possible that all the university administrators responsible for students do not know the exact number of students in the university? What will happen to all these students who will miss the headcount?”

VERY SLOW

Even as the grumbling continues, the queues are snaking around the university. For Gloria Ainembabazi, a second-year student majoring in psychology, the process does not have enough manpower.

“Can you imagine we at the school of psychology do not have a counting point? We were told to go to College of Humanities and Social Sciences (Chuss). It is so tiresome given the fact that students are too many and the lines are too long,” Ainembabazi said, adding that the process is in a wrong timing since it is [happening during] examination period where every student is making final touches.

An investigation by The Observer has found that the committee has set up ten counting points in the university. These are located at each college. We have estimated that at least 35 students are counted by the panel each hour.

With the counting panels sitting between 8am and 5pm (nine hours) for five days a week, we estimated that the panels were able to 3,150 students per day. To count the estimated 37,500 students at Makerere, the panels will need to work for 11 days.

A source familiar with the process but who preferred anonymity said headcounting is only taking place at Makerere main campus and students from the other branches like Jinja and Makerere University Business School (Mubs) will not be counted.

This, the source added, is because those campuses are have less enrollment which is known by the respective officials in those institutions.

tusiime.chris21@gmail.com

With just a short message, one can now check the registration and license status of all government and private schools across the country.

According to Huzaifah Mutazindwa, the director for Education Standards at the ministry of education, the SMS platform is intended to empower people to make correct decisions when registering their children in schools.

“There has been some laxity in the ministry to follow up school licenses. This time, we have developed this system to also help people [so] that, if we decide to close a certain school, they are informed whether it was licensed or not,” Mutazindwa told The Observer on the sidelines of the S1 selection exercise in Lugogo. last week.

To check for a school’s license status, you go to your messages and type SCV, leave a space, name of school, and send to 8700. The messages are free of charge.

“Even when you type the wrong spelling of a school’s name, you will receive a message of all the schools [with names related] to what you have typed and then you follow the instructions [to arrive at the intended name],” he said.

When we tried out the system, we found it efficient. For instance, when I typed SCV Bishop McAllister and sent it to 8700, I received a long list of schools with names starting with Bishop.

After a short while, I got another message reading: “Bishop McAllister College Kyogera is in our system. Validation will be completed through physical inspection of the school by our inspectors.”

In December last year, the ministry of education declared that it would inspect all schools this year and close all those working contrary to the education regulations.

Mutazindwa urged parents and guardians who cannot use the SMS platform to insist on requesting for the school licenses before they register their children in schools. Mutazindwa said the ministry was working with the police and local government education officials to close unlicensed schools.

The education ministry has also ordered head teachers of private schools to pin their licenses and registration certificates in their offices for easy access by parents and guardians.

Later, Alex Kakooza, the ministry of education permanent secretary, told head teachers at Lugogo that schools failing to participate in this year’s annual learners headcount would also have their operational licenses cancelled and the registration certificates of private schools terminated.

“Head teachers of government schools will in addition be suspended and punished accordingly,” Kakooza said. “All heads of institutions, both private and government, should prepare the annual school census data as soon as the term opens.”

The schools headcount is aimed at addressing the issue of ghost teachers, learners, their enrolment and attendance in school. Meanwhile, the ministry also plans to recruit about 2,000 secondary school teachers this year in order to improve the quality of learning in government schools. Of these, 1,500 will be science teachers and 500 for English language.

nangonzi@observer.ug

For a very long time, St Julian High School, Gayaza, had failed to address complaints of theft of pocket money in the dormitories.

But as YUDAYA NANGONZI recently found, technology has come to the rescue.

The deputy head teacher at St Julian High School, Stephen Owori, recently told The Observer cases of theft have been resolved through a solution many students were initially opposed to.

“At school, we have a provision for students given pocket money in the excess of Shs 5,000 to keep it with the school bursar. But most of the students prefer to keep their money in the dormitory,” Owori said. “And guess what, money is delicate and they ended up robbing each other.”

St Julian students would go to the dormitories with pocket money ranging from Shs 70,000 to Shs 150,000 each term. Today, the vice is history after the school embraced a smart application dubbed LipaMobile, which uses plastic smart cards to make transactions.

“Parents no longer need to give hard cash to their children. [Instead] they send money to the card by dialing *270*77# on their phones … [after this, they are able to] monitor purchases made by the child through a text message sent after every transaction at the canteen,” Owori said, adding that theft of pocket money has reduced by almost three quarters since the school embraced the technology for the last one year.

“With these transaction cards, no one can steal and use it unless you have its secret code. The cards also bear the photographs of the owners; so, we also utilise them as school identity cards.”

A similar service was recently introduced at Nabisunsa Girls SS as Lenard Butsiba, the schools’ head of Chemistry, explains.

“It is now a school policy that all children must own a LipaMobile card instead of bringing hard cash. We use the cards as a gate pass, at the sickbay, library and in the dining hall to access meals and control doubling by some students,” he said.

Each card costs Shs 20,000 and a student can use it for up to six years. If a student decides to leave the school to join another that does not have the system, a parent can withdraw all the savings on the card at the school premises.

OTHER USES

The card is also being developed to embrace other uses. One of these is as a means of registering entry and exit into the school premises. As a gate pass, a student swipes their card at the gate and this sends a message to the parent, indicating that the student has checked in or out at a particular time.

“Parents can be able to determine the time it will take their children to reach home. By doing this, the cards control some errant children that would meander around the city and reach home late or after some time,” Butsiba said.

Laban Jemba, the chief executive officer of LipaMobile, who shared more on the service options of the application at Imperial Royale hotel in Kampala recently, said 15 schools use the smart cards so far and 23 more have registered to get started.

“Digital migration is an irreversible trend and the way to go. By students not having cash at hand, it is not easy to lure them into indiscipline actions that involve money like buying alcohol and marijuana, among others, since they need a swipe machine to withdraw money,” Jemba said.

Some of the schools that are actively using the system are Baptist High School, Zzana, Trinity College Nabbingo, Irma Pfeiffer Bweya High School and teachers at King's College, Budo.

Schools that have registered to start using the application this year include Uganda Martyrs SS Namugongo, Kawempe Muslim High School, St Lawrence School Ssonde, Viva College Jinja, Trinity Academy, St Augustine College Wakiso, and Mt St Henry’s High School in Mukono.

According to Jemba, parents are also able to obtain students’ academic reports, disciplinary reports, school announcements and class attendance, among others, using LipaMobile application on their mobile phones.

“While students can easily get pocket money on their card, a parent can also set spending limits [the times a child can withdraw money] from the card,” he said.

CHILD'S RIGHTS

To some parents, LipaMobile is a welcome development as it will enable them to monitor the growth of their children into adults. According to Tina Musuya, LipaMobile enables parents to assess how their children are developing into adults. However, she thinks the development should be taken with a pinch of salt.

“It has a good component, but I think it is keeping the child under the direct control of their parents, instead of igniting their ability to be responsible on their own,” she said. “We also need to know that they are our children but they are entitled to some level of dignity and privacy as human beings.”

Musuya, who is also executive director at Centre For Domestic Violence Prevention (Cedovip), argues that the app will enable some parents to stalk their children.

“If a child wants to buy their friend a bottle of soda, you as the parent will be watching and asking why that money is being spent,” she added. “Swiping as they get into class has nothing to do what kind of learning is occurring there ... the solution is to address some of the constraints to learning and allow the child to develop into a decent human being.” 

However, Patrick Kaboyo, a retired teacher whose daughter will soon join secondary school, is excited that the application will give him more opportunity to guide her development.

“The students will be excited about the facility, and forget their need to act responsibly,” he said. However, he agrees that there is a need to treat the advantages derived from LipaMobile with care.

“Innovation should not be at the expense of children’s rights to privacy.”

On the extreme end, Diana Kagere Mugerwa is opposed to some of the advantages derived from LipaMobile.

“That is stalking a child … I would not support it if it was introduced at my daughter’s school,” she says. “It will ruin the growing relationship between parents and children. Visitation days are usually meant to enable bonding, but now it will be a question-and-answer session where parents are asking why a certain amount of money was spent.”

PROGRESS CONTINUES

However, Esther Batenga, the client support manager of LipaMobile, said the application continues to be challenged by teachers in some schools.

“Parents would send pocket money via mobile money on teachers' phones and give them some money as well. Now, when they realised that they can no longer cheat the parents with cards, they are fighting the system,” Batenga said, urging parents to embrace the application in order to follow up on their monies to students.

Currently, LipaMobile is in talks with several supermarket owners to ensure that students are able to use the same cards for school shopping.

nangonzi@observer.ug

Title: My Camera, My Life
Author: Sir Mohinder Dhillon
Pages: 689
Publisher: Mkuki Na Nyota
Price: Shs 153,000
Available: Aristoc Booklex

Why should you read Mohinder Dhillon's autobiography My Camera, My Life? Dhillon is one of the most remarkable men you have never heard about. His life reads like an adventure story.

Here is a man who was born in India in 1931, made his name in Africa in the 1960s, and was successful enough to be on first name basis with world leaders in Europe in the 1980s.

Dhillon's life and achievements are more astonishing when you realise that he did all this with very little formal education. He failed his Ordinary Level exams and stumbled into a journalism career after his father fortuitously bought him a second hand Box Brownie camera in 1948.

Dhillon did not even intend to become a photojournalist. His ambition, at the beginning, was to be a successful studio photographer.

He wanted to make enough money to earn a living so he did not continue to drain the meagre resources of his struggling father who was a clerk in the East African Railways and Harbours Corporation. The third born of seven children, he was terrified of bringing disgrace to the family by failing to earn his own upkeep.

His father Tek Singh had left their tiny, poverty stricken village Babar Pur in India in 1918 at just 17 years old for Africa to work on the East African railway.

He had arrived with nothing in his rags at Mombasa, Kenya; slept on Sikh temple verandas, and worked for twenty-nine years before he could afford to send for his growing family to live with him in Nairobi in 1947.

Sikhs by faith and a very tightly knit family, men were expected to go out and fend for their families. Dhillon was haunted by the sacrifices his father, uncle and female relatives had made.

He refused to fail. Employed by Halle Studio in 1951, this school dropout without formal photographic training would buy out his employer in three years.

And then Dhillon was off! For the next forty-seven years, Dhillon was at the scene of most historic events in Africa and some of Asia's and Europe's. He filmed the painful emergence of Kenya from British colonial rule in the 1950s.

His Black Man's Land, available on YouTube, maybe the earliest filmed record of Kenya's bloody struggle for independence and troubling aftermath.

Dhillon filmed and photographed the start of Ugandan president, General Idi Amin Dada's rule in Kampala in 1971. He also filmed Amin's downfall in April 1979, actually witnessing his desperate last flight out of Uganda forever from Jinja in a Libyan Bell twin-jet helicopter.

In between, Dhillon got close enough to Amin to end up liking the man personally even as he reported on the murders committed in his name.

Dhillon's book, published in 2016, is one of the few on record that admits to the role of foreign media in crafting Amin's lasting image as the ogre of Africa. Dhillon is fascinating on Amin. Scholars of this unforgettable African leader will find My Camera, My Life invaluable.

But Amin is not the only African president Dhillon had extensive contact with. He was once the official photographer of Ethiopia's last emperor, Haile Selassie. Dhillon's Afripix Company (as he had renamed Halle studio in 1961) would document Selassie's international travels from 1966 to the meek dénouement of his reign on 12th September 1974.

Dhillon writes of Ethiopia with more fondness than many other countries he reported from. The graciousness and suffering he witnessed in an Ethiopia continually wracked by famines and drought would crack through his journalistic impartiality.

Dhillon was one of the several journalists to report consistently on Ethiopia's devastating 1980s famine. Their combined journalistic efforts would result in a global movement in 1984 to fundraise for Ethiopia's famine relief.

Nineteen years later, Dhillon would receive a knighthood with the title Sir from the Imperial Ethiopian Order of Saint Mary of Zion in 2005. The award came four years after his retirement from active journalism in 2001 at seventy.

My Camera, My Life by Mohinder Dhillon is an invaluable book. Beyond a memoir of Dhillon's own very adventurous life, My Camera is an eyewitness account of some of the 20th century's most significant historic events. A student of Africa could not find a richer resource.

The boys wait.  Bella waits. Anansi waits. They all want more story. Uncle Junior continues his story.

“The box sat in front of the unpainted house, the home of those dogs Rolly and Pully who resemble two mops.”
“Scout, the dog with the big head who keeps neighbors awake at night, slowly crept to Hudson’s house. Hudson, with hairs that stand straight up like a lion, did not come running as if to attack.  Hudson did not make ferocious noise.  Hudson was afraid.”

“Hudson and Scout made their way carefully to little Sasha’s house. Hudson and Scout and Sasha huddled together. They did not head to Rolly and Pully’s unpainted house, where the box lay.”

“They did not look at Rolly and Pully.  Instead, they walked a circle around Rolly and Pully and the box, and stepped over to the blue verandah of Old Raffy, who has lived many years and gained much wisdom.  Raffy had no wisdom to share today.  Old Raffy had never before seen dogs in such fear.  This box had brought such fear.”

“Anansi crept into the road. Anansi edged toward the box, nose sniffing and ears pointing. Anansi watched for any movement and listened for any sound. There was none. 

Anansi’s nose pushed the box. It had no weight. Anansi stood back to consider this. No sound, no movement, no weight? 

What was in this box?  Anansi’s nose pushed it again. It moved very easily, as if empty. Anansi pushed again with more force. The box tumbled over, easily. It was indeed empty!”

“Anansi looked at Rolly and Pully. They still did not move. Anansi looked at Scout and the others on Old Raffy’s verandah. They too were frozen in fear, still refusing to look at Rolly and Pully.”

Uncle Junior pauses at the end of this story.  There is quiet.

“Why did they fear an empty box?” asks Justinian.  “It was nothing!”
The boys ponder. 

“Did they fear it because it was new to them?”
Uncle Junior adds a question, “Why do we fear what we do not know?”

anansi99@hotmail.com

Recently, the education ministry condemned teachers and schools in general that allow for students to study for examinations, rather than actually studying.

In her speech, the education minister, Janet Museveni, condemned as lacking in ethics, teachers who made it their business to spot, which topics were due for examination, rather than teaching the entire syllabus.

She was also disappointed at the rather absurd situation of teachers making students cram various texts of material for use as answers in examinations. She tasked school inspectors to work to rule out the problem.

As explained by the Uganda National Examinations Board executive secretary, Dan Nokrach Odongo, these hapless students are regularly made to cram large texts for use in exams.

For instance, in an English examination paper, students were asked to prepare a letter to a member of parliament, regarding what a hypothetical local council I chairman would say about a firm that was dumping waste in their area.

Many students, who had been expecting the examiner to ask about minutes of a meeting, did not read the question to the end and simply reproduced the crammed material, resulting in failure.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time the matter has been raised in a public forum. For instance, in her time as education minister, Geraldine Namirembe Bitamazire once condemned the issue, while releasing examination results in 2010. She vowed to make sure the vice was eradicated.

The matter cropped up severally under Bitamazire’s successor, Jessica Alupo. In one instance in 2012, she threatened to take stern action against teachers involved in promoting cramwork, spotting and the use of pamphlets. She never spelt out what stern action was in store for the errant teachers.

Ms Museveni has also not spelt out any prescribed punishment for the errant teachers. Therefore, it is unlikely that the vice will go away. So, it is now up to learners and their parents to determine when to stop following the bad advice from their teachers.   

school@observer.ug

Bethany High School, located two kilometres off Namugongo road, has risen in 16 years to become one of the top schools in the area. SAMUEL MATEGE, the school's deputy head teacher in charge of academics, told

Jonathan Kamoga that soon, the school will be among the very best in the country.

Give us a brief background on Bethany High School.

Bethany High School started in 2000. It is a registered private school, Christian-founded, boarding, mixed, and offering both O and A-levels, with arts and sciences.

How do you rate the school’s performance academically over the years?

Especially in UCE, the number of students attaining division one has been increasing every year, and now our best students are scoring aggregate 8 in 8. So, I can say that each year the performance has been getting better.

How big is your enrolment?

Our enrolment is currently 620 students, but the infrastructure in place accommodates 1,800 students. So, we are actually operating below our full capacity. 

Compared to other institutions in this area, and in Uganda, do you think Bethany is any better?

Yes it is better. What we offer here is a holistic education. We give students the academic part and also co-curricular. We try to train a real person and I think we do this better than others.

Secondly, we take in students that have scored grade 1, 2 and 3 , but we turn them into good grades. This is unlike our competitors who take in only division one. We then compete in the same way; so, I believe we are better.

How is your fees structure and how many subjects do you offer at O-level?

We offer 14 subjects in senior one and on entrance, school fees is Shs 715,000 and uniform is Shs 200,000 for O-level and A-level students pay Shs 880,000 in addition with Shs 200,000 for uniforms.

How was the school’s performance in UCE this year?

I must say the performance was a really good one, because I had my best candidate scoring 8 in 8. So, that’s splendid. And then we got 26 students in division one, 30 in division two, and 20 in division three.

How are the school’s academic facilities?

I think Bethany has the best facilities around this area, such as the science laboratories. Each science subject has its own laboratory which is well stocked and has two trained technicians.

We have a very big library that can accommodate 500 students at a go and it is stocked with the relevant books that a student can use for research. The computer laboratory has enough computers to run a class of 60 students at once and my classes are around that number.

The dormitories are spacious because we are not yet at full capacity. Water and power are running throughout and we also have a borehole. The children are enjoying those facilities and the sanitation is excellent.

Generally, where do you see Bethany five or ten years from now?

I see Bethany becoming a great school and one to be reckoned with in this area, because the directors and the administration have a big dream for the school.  Since we now have the necessary infrastructure, we are going to ensure that the academics shoot up, together with the enrolment.

We shall grow and we shall become one of the best schools in Uganda within a short time.

kamogajonathan50@gmail.com

Students of Light Secondary and Vocational School, Bulenga, in Wakiso district, will be able to read in the newly-built library, starting today. The new school library has a 1,500 seating capacity, with modern reading materials.

At a ceremony to commission the library on Friday, February 3, Vice President Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi applauded the proprietors and management of the school for the idea of putting up a new block that would enhance the teaching of science to the students.

This, he said, especially as the country prepares them for the modern age where science and technology are being emphasized for socio-economic transformation.

“I thank the director/founder for establishing this school which 23 years ago started from very humble beginnings, in a garage, with one student. It now boasts of 1,600 students, at nursery, primary and secondary school levels. It is gratifying to observe how far you have come,” he said.

However, Joseph Kiberu Mbuga, the director and founder of the school, said the growth and expansion of the giant education complex, from a garage school that started on June 22, 1993, was also due to God’s grace.

“God is a partner in our business, and not an intruder. The greater we make our God, the smaller our problems become,” he said.

He also attributed his success to the religious discipline of the SDA church. Mbuga pointed out that this was the second visit by Ssekandi, the first being when he commissioned a modern science laboratory in December 2008, which has a capacity of 280 students.

He also commissioned  the girls’ dormitory ‒ named Ebenezer ‒ with a capacity of 360 girls, and launched a school musical video/album.

According to ministry of education officials and the Wakiso district education team, the school offers valuable services, including free consultation, guidance and professional advice from high-calibre Ugandan professionals that include vice presidents, presidential advisors, ministers, members of parliament, business consultants, bishops and professors, among others.

Mbuga thanked the government of Uganda that had contributed through the maintenance of peace, law and order, and economic liberalization that favours private enterprise.

“The income tax holiday that was accorded to private schools ‒ until recently in 2015 when tax has been reintroduced ‒ enabled Bulenga school to expand by an over 400 per cent growth,” he said.

Light Secondary and Vocational school, Light primary school, Light nursery and Daycare Bulenga are located 11km along Mityana road.

alfredodcho@gmail.com

A week after the release of 2016 Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) results, YUDAYA NANGONZI and ALI TWAHA took time to study the results in comparison to 2015 and found that some schools continue to thrive regardless.

A comparison of the recently -released 2016 UCE results and those of 2015 shows that a few schools have maintained and others improved in division one performance.

The Observer compared the number of students passing in first division attained by each school across the country and the total number of candidates it had in a particular year.

The table published today puts St Mary’s SS Kitende on top for maintaining its division one performance though it had only three candidates passing with aggregate 8 in 8, this year.

For instance, Kitende had 431 candidates in 2015 of which 430 passed in division one, leaving one candidate in division two. In the 2016 results, the school has 433 candidates and at least 430 passed in division one. Only three passed in division two.

It is followed by Uganda Martyrs SS Namungongo with 260 first grades out of 266 candidates in 2016 results compared to 197 first grades and 203 candidates in 2015.

King's College Budo with 266 candidates also improved in performance in 2016 with 241 students in division one, compared to the 220 it had in 2015 out of 242 candidates.

Despite taking a 12th position in ranking by division one, Ntare School also maintained the same number of first grades in both years at 190. The tables exclude results of 1,893 candidates from 86 examination centres whose results were withheld to allow completion of investigations and accord the suspected persons a fair hearing.

Speaking at the release of UCE results last week, the Uneb executive secretary, Dan Odongo, said candidates who passed in division one were able to demonstrate high levels of knowledge and skills in the subjects they took.

In 2016, at least 316,624 sat for the examinations compared to 306,507 in 2015. Uneb statistics indicate that of these, 2,349 (7.5 per cent) passed in division one, a lesser figure than 25,750 (8.5 per cent) in 2015.

Odongo attributed the drop in performance to the candidates’ failure to comprehend the English language, mathematics and the sciences. On a low note, out of the 3,231 schools appearing today, 1,130 schools have no candidates with first grades despite having big class sizes.

For instance, Mbale-based Nakaloke SS had 296 candidates but none passed in division one in 2016. Its best candidate passed in division three with aggregate 37. Kitgum Vision College, with 350 candidates, registered no first grade last year after it had only one candidate in division one with 19 candidates in 2015.

nangonzi@observer.ug
alitwaha9@gmail.com

Makerere College School beat School Allstars 2-0 in football to win the Victoria University soccerfest last week.

For their efforts, they were rewarded with a trophy and a cash prize of Shs 300,000.

Held at the Kampala Parents School grounds, the tournament was organized by Victoria University in conjunction with the Federation of Students Football Associations (Fesfa), a body started to promote local football among teenagers, and Soccannet Uganda.

The games attracted high school graduates from several secondary schools for a day of soccer competition.

The schools included St Mary’s College Kisubi, King's College Budo, Light Academy SS, Greenhill Academy, Makerere College School, St Henry’s College Kitovu, Uganda Martyrs SS Namugongo and School Allsters, a collection of players from several schools.

Before the action started, the teams received a briefing from Victoria University’s marketing manager, Lawrence Masesa, and interim coach, Nestory Kizito (also a former Cranes midfielder).

Other winners on the day included Jonathan Obote of Makerere College School as Most Valuable Player (MVP), as well as Nasser Kagimu of Light Academy SS for the Golden Boot award.

The usually-somber mood at Luzira Upper prison was, for a few inmates replaced with joy, as they celebrated a good performance in the O-level results unveiled by the Uganda National Examinations Board, last week.

The prison’s best student, 22-year-old Morrish Ogema, obtained aggregate 21 and could not hold back his joy at the feat. His colleagues carried him alongside their head teacher, Gilbert Niwamanya, in a small celebration of their good performance.

“I am very happy that I could perform like this, given our difficult conditions in here,” said Ogema. He explained that he had to revise from toilet every night, due of the 10pm lights out policy in the prison wards.

The ecstatic Ogema was full of praise for the opportunity to study while in prison and appealed to the ministry to provide facilities to study sciences at A-level.

“I would have wanted to do PCM [Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics] and become an engineer but since we don’t have sciences, I will do HEG [History Economics and Geography] and become the best teacher in this country,” said Ogema, who is in the seventh year of his 15-year jail term. Studying in prison is filled with unimaginable hardships, but Geoffrey Mawa, second-best in this school, obtained aggregate 30 to confirm that it is not insurmountable.

“I’m the happiest man in the world right now,” declared the 26-year-old Mawa, who is on remand for a case he preferred not to disclose.
“I first sat for UCE while outside prison and I failed, but when I came here, I got a lot of encouragement which pushed me to study hard.”

Mawa will also pursue HEG for his A-level studies as the school lacks a laboratory to conduct sciences at Luzira. Dennis Mujuni, the inmate head teacher, urged government to take over A-level and primary education in the prisons, while Niwamanya advocated for better learning conditions on the women’s side.

“Prison conditions are hard that when we get such performances, we are right to celebrate,” Niwamanya said.

Out of the candidates who registered for the examinations, four passed in the first division, ahead of five in second division. A further 10 passed in the third division and 21 students in the fourth division. None of the students were in the seventh grade while four students failed.

Only five of the students were female, three of whom failed while the two who passed were in the third and fourth grade.

pbaike@yahoo.com

Recently, the education ministry published the budget framework paper in preparation for discussions on the 2017/18 national budget. SAMUEL KAMUGISHA has been looking at some of the changes coming in the education sector's budget.

The education sector is one of the eight key areas that will suffer budget cuts in the 2017/18 financial year if the proposed allocations contained in the budget framework paper are not revised. Although the total budget is estimated at Shs 30.3tn, up from just over Shs 25tn in the current financial year, eight key sectors, including education, could see their allocations significantly shrink.

Compared with the sector’s allocation in FY2016/17, government has proposed a 3.1 per cent cut for education. Government has suggested that the sector uses Shs 2.37tn – a figure that is Shs 77.5bn lower than Shs 2.448tn allotted in the current financial year.

The allocation falls short of the 2015/16–2019/20 second National Development Plan (NDPII) projections. According to the plan, 13.6 per cent of the total budget should have been spent on education in the FY2017/18. But the proposed allocation, according to the budget framework, is 10.6 per cent.

If the proposed budget is passed in its current form, the cuts could affect allocations to almost all the sector’s activities. The components of higher education, skill development and pre-primary and primary education will suffer the highest cuts.

The higher education budget will suffer a Shs 47bn cut, from Shs 157bn in the current financial year to Shs 111bn in 2017/18. Allocation to the skills development component will be reduced by Shs 33bn, from Shs the current Shs 216bn to Shs 183bn in the next financial year. Funding for pre-primary and primary education will reduce by Shs 26bn – from Shs 144bn in 2016/17 to Shs 118bn in 2017/18.

The budget for policy, planning and support services for the education sector will reduce by Shs 4bn from Shs 41bn in 2016-17 to Shs 37bn in 2017/18 while the secondary education allocation will reduce by about Shs 3bn from Shs 16bn to Shs 13bn in the same period.

Compared with the 2016-17 budget, allocation to the quality and standards component will reduce by about Shs 600m while that for monitoring and supervision will shrink by Shs 500m. The budget for physical education and sports will tumble by Shs 308m while that of special-needs education will plummet by Shs 55m.

An analysis of the cuts in the education sector allocations indicates shrinking donor funding and the finance ministry’s deliberate move to cut expenditure on consumptive items. For other components, there was simply no need to budget for them since they had been implemented while others were transferred to other departments.

PRIMARY

The Pre-primary and Primary education area will see a cut of over Shs 25bn – from about Shs 144bn in the current financial year to about Shs 118bn in FY2017/18.

While just over Shs 14bn will be spent on primary school instructional materials in the current financial year, there is no allocation for the same in the next fiscal year because “contract implementation is ongoing for procurement and delivery of instructional materials under the [Uganda Teacher and School Effectiveness Project] UTSEP project and part of the contract has been paid.”

Also, reduction in UTSEP project funding has led to a Shs 11.5bn slashing of construction and rehabilitation budgets for the next financial year. With this cut, only 138 selected primary schools in hard-to-reach areas will benefit from next year’s budget. For these, the remaining Utsep funding will see facilities such as classrooms, administration blocks, latrines, and teachers’ houses either constructed or rehabilitated.

But the cut for the primary education component has raised concern among social activists. Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group (Csbag) has recommended that about Shs 53.87bn be earmarked to erect primary schools in parishes that have no primary school.

“[This] will reduce the distance pupils cover to access schools and contribute towards increased rates of enrolment, retention and completion of school,” reads part of Csbag’s statement titled The budget we want for FY 2017/18.

Although the early childhood policy was launched last year, no allocation has been made to prioritise the same. This means that provision of the pre-primary level of education will largely remain in the hands of private education providers. Capitation grants for each pupil under Universal Primary Education will remain a measly Shs 10,000 per annum.

SECONDARY

According to the budget framework paper, expenditure on secondary education will be cut by about Shs 2.6bn, from just about Shs 16bn in the current financial year to about Shs 13.3bn in 2017/18.

Government has classified expenditure on policies, laws and guidelines (Shs 1.12bn) and monitoring and supervision (Shs 0.1bn) as consumptive items and cut the monies meant for these function. About Shs 1.34bn meant for training of teachers has been cut because of “reduction in donor allocation under the SESMAT component of development of Secondary Project”.

The budget cuts for the education sector also mean that 615 sub-counties of Uganda will have to wait longer to have a public secondary school – and 312 sub-counties may not have any form of secondary school unless private players step in. The reduction in budget for the education sector is telling of government postponement of its own commitment.

Although the education sector had requested for Shs 38bn for classroom construction and renovation, no provision for the same has been made in the proposed budget.

HIGHER EDUCATION

Under the higher education component, about Shs 39bn meant for construction and rehabilitation of facilities has not been provided for. Also, each public tertiary institution has seen its budgets slightly slashed.

For some universities, their demands to government could take longer to be met. For example, whereas Mbarara University of Science and Technology (Must) requested for Shs 28bn to recruit 731 lecturers, no allocation was made for this cause.

This means that lecturers will continue to double as clinicians at the Must teaching hospital. The Shs 6bn needed to recruit lecturers at Kyambogo University and Shs 5.5bn needed for the same purpose at Gulu have both not been provided. Kabale University will also have to wait a little longer for government to provide Shs 17bn for harmonisation of the nascent institution’s salary structures.

Under the skills development component, money meant for constructing and rehabilitating facilities such as administration blocks in Business, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (BTVET) institutions has also been cut. Reduction in donor funding will see Shs 10bn under this component slashed.

OTHER CUTS

Other areas that will suffer budget cuts include the supervision and inspection component. From Shs 4.6bn in the current financial year to the proposed Shs 4.1bn, the component will see a Shs 500m reduction. 

The cut has already got education activists talking. According to Fiona Oriikiriza, a social activist with Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (Iser), the reduction of the supervision budget will not help absenteeism of teachers and teachers.

“The education sector will now see a lot of schools that don’t meet the basic requirements and minimum standards coming up, and teacher and pupil absenteeism will worsen, hence poor performance outcomes,” Oriikiriza said during the pre-budget dialogue held at Makerere University on January 24.

UNEB

Assessment body Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) will see a budgetary cut despite the increase in number of candidates assessed as a result of universal education programmes. Uneb’s budget has been cut from Shs 31.45bn in the current financial year to Shs 29.8bn in the next one.

The examinations body needs an additional Shs 8.2bn to deal with the increasing candidature at the end of primary, O- and A-levels in FY2017/18. If the Uneb budget is not revised, glitches could mar the 2017 final examinations. The assessment body might also struggle to pay invigilators, examiners and the release of examination results could delay.

NCDC

The budget for the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) will drop from Shs 8.5bn in the current financial year to Shs 6.7bn in 2017/18. According to the budget framework paper, the cut in the NCDC budget means that the primary and secondary departments of the curriculum body and the development of Btvet curriculum will be scaled down.

Although the education sector has set the commencement of the new lower secondary education curriculum for 2018, about Shs 1.8bn needed to fast-track the rolling out of the curriculum has not been allocated.

kamsam21@gmail.com