For years now, the education ministry has been grappling with a school dropout problem. With no immediate solutions in sight, the problem has developed into a vicious cycle as MOSES TALEMWA and PRISCA BAIKE recently found.
In Barbara Masikye’s home in Bunambutye village in Mbale, there are no graduates. Senior four graduates that is. Most drop out of school long before that.
Masikye’s uncle, only known as Khaukha, got tired of supporting Barbara’s two older cousins after they completed their senior four. So he went for a drastic solution. Anyone who fails to excel in class, in senior two, gets a motorcycle, obtained from the sale of part of Khaukha’s previously vast tract of land in Sironko.
With the motorcycle, they start off into the boda boda business, earning a living, but also contributing to what is becoming an alarming school dropout problem.
“We are too poor to spend money on higher levels of education, especially, nothing is going to change as far as getting a job is concerned,” Masikye explains. “Our uncle has decided that before he dies, everyone should be able to fend for themselves.”
Masikye’s problem is just one part of a growing crisis among the youth across the country that has attracted the attention of the African Development Bank (ADB).
In a wide ranging report, the ADB is concerned that poverty in families is increasing the rate of school dropout, worsening the unemployment problem. The ADB’s Education for All Global Monitoring report, released earlier this year, showed that 38%of children in sub Saharan Africa, who supposed to be in lower secondary schools, drop out, compared to 26% of children out of primary school.
This tallies with another report by the United Nations Education Scientific Cultural Organisation (Unesco) in 2012, which shows that 42 per cent of all school going children are likely to drop out of school before the end of primary school.
“More than two in five children who start school will not reach ... the end of their primary school. Dropout rates in Africa are highest in Chad (72%), followed by Uganda (68%),” the report reads.
The Education ministry’s inspection reports on the school dropout problem make for miserable reading. The districts of Kalangala and Buvuma have the highest dropout rates in the country at 72 per cent, followed by Busoga sub region and the north east.
Fred Mwesigye, executive director of the Forum for Education NGOs (Fenu), has been looking at the problem and is not surprised.
“Off course poverty is fueling the school dropout problem… it explains why a fisherman’s son finds it more lucrative to drop out of school and join the family trade so they can improve their standing,” Mwesigye says. “It explains why those parts of the country are not generating enough labour to fuel the formal economy.”
By this, Mwesigye is hinting at the core of the ADB’s report. Children, who would have been able to graduate and create jobs in a formal economy, are only able to survive on menial jobs. According to the district inspector of schools in Hoima, Ibrahim Bigabwa, parents are not helping the situation.
“Wherever you go, you will see children washing cars in parking bays, but the parents, who benefit from this labour, should be the ones stopping this vice at all costs,” he says. “These children are supporting their families, but the ruining the futures of their own offspring.”
UNEMPLOYED EDUCATED
Dr Daniel Nkaada, the commissioner for Basic Education at the ministry of Education and Sports acknowledges that something needs to be done. He argues that there is a need to address the unemployment issue in order to make schooling more appealing to students and parents, to increase the secondary school enrolment levels.
In saying so, Dr Nkaada is acknowledging reports in the ministry, which indicate that despite increased access to primary schooling in the past 15 years, absorbing primary school graduates into secondary school remains a challenge, as the transition from primary to secondary school remains low.
According to Dr Nkaada, the low absorption rate of primary school graduates into secondary schools and is potentially caused by poor performance in final examinations.
“When a pupil is in Division U (ungraded), there is no other avenue since we don’t encourage repeating,” said Nkaada.
Apart from the government’s financial constraints and the lack of government secondary schools, Dr Nkaada points out the indirect costs associated with education, such as buying books, pens, uniforms, which can be a major hindering factor to school enrolment.
Dr Nkaada acknowledges that the unemployment of those already out of school is another outstanding cause of low secondary school enrolment.
“Some people have started looking at education as a cost for nothing. You educate a child and you still continue to look after them even after they have graduated simply because they are unemployed,” said Dr Nkaada.
Research indicates that youth unemployment is higher among higher education graduates and wealthy households. Consequently, unemployment is averagely three times higher among those with a secondary education or above compared to those with no education.
It is also twice as high among youth from households in the highest income quintile as compared to those in the lowest income quintile, as indicated in both World Bank, Africa Development Bank indicators released between 2008 and 2014.
DOUBLE SOLUTION
The ADB report shows that African countries are responding to the increasing social demand for higher education, whereas labour markets, particularly in the informal sector, are not ready to absorb these graduates.
Indeed the ADB’s own report shows that, whereas primary and secondary school children are dropping out in droves, the number of university graduates has almost tripled between 1999 and 2009 in Sub-Saharan Africa; increasing from 1.6 million to 4.9 million.
Many of these are still either under-employed, or doing menial jobs to survive. The ADB report has called for the equipping youths with skills relevant for the informal sector to create more jobs in the formal sector to absorb the unemployed youths.
The report indicates that keeping children in school to lower the level of employment. However, for those already out of schools (including the parents) there is a need to re-educate them to become ready for the market, and end their poverty.
Either way, the ADB thinks education is a double panacea. Time will tell if sufficient money to invest in education at all levels can be found, to cure unemployment and poverty, so Masikye’s remaining siblings can stay in school.
mtalemwa@observer.ug
pbaike@yahoo.com