For years now, the state has insisted that it will support learning in schools, but that feeding of learners should be left to parents. As ABUBAKER MAYEMBA reports, the status quo will not change, even as indicators show that the state had been willing to reconsider its position.
Countless reports have indicated that the lack of a formal state-sponsored school lunch programme is partly behind the dismal learning outcomes in eastern and northern Uganda.
The latest report, by the National Planning Authority (NPA), was presented to the education minister, Janet Museveni, at a meeting at Hotel Africana, last week.
In his remarks, the NPA chairman, Wilberforce Kisamba Mugerwa, asked the minister to find a solution to the problem, noting that it was one of the challenges faced in the education sector. He told the education sector strategic planning workshop that many children were reported to have dropped out of school due to lack of meals in schools.
“A school lunch programme could be achieved since most government schools in Karamoja and some urban areas were offering meals to their scholars,” he said.
However, the minister, who previously served in the Karamoja portfolio, was adamant and insisted that the state would not step in and provide meals to school children as this would be denying parents their role of providing for their offspring.
“I feel very strongly that we need to allow the communities of Uganda and parents to have a role to play in the education of their children,” said Mrs Museveni. “I don’t think it is right to take this to cabinet to provide lunch. I don’t think it is necessary. It cripples our communities altogether.”
The minister insisted that parents and guardians are legally mandated to cater for the needs of their children while at school. She added that taking a resolution to cabinet for the government to provide meals to scholars would not yield much, since it had already been discussed.
She then cited section 5 sub-section 2(iii) of the 2008 Education Pre-Primary and Post-Primary Act, where parents and guardians are mandated to provide food, shelter, clothing and medical care, among others, to help support their children while in school.
KARAMOJA SUCCESS
However, the minister harked back to the Karamoja programme, where she once worked. She observed that the school feeding programme would succeed if local leaders sensitised parents and guardians about the value of providing food to their children.
The first lady explained that while she was still minister for Karamoja, she partnered with the Uganda Prisons and World Food Programme (WFP) to provide meals for school children in the region because their families had no food. She, however, added that she would mobilise parents to play their role of providing meals to their children.
“I’m willing to impress it on our people that they need to provide lunch to their children and I trust that can happen. We don’t need any other policy or cabinet paper but we want to use our Act and continue to mobilise our people to do that,”
Commenting on the Early Childhood Development (ECD), Mrs Museveni said although it was vibrant with the private sector, it would be hard for government to fast-track it. She argued that there was need to first consolidate the ‘monumental’ projects of Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Secondary Education (USE) before embracing ECD.
BACKGROUND
The request for state support in the school feeding programme has its roots in various calls to by the president in 2013. At the time, several education activists insisted that there was a need for the state to support the school lunch programme.
They insisted that while the parents acknowledged that it was their responsibility to feed their children, they were also having hard time feeding themselves.
Although he had previously held the view that the state would not lift a finger to provide school lunch, the president appeared willing to reconsider his stand, state funds permitting.
This was in the wake of several reports showing that several schools in northern and northeastern Uganda were only providing schooling during the morning hours, while children were let free to scavenge for lunch on their own. Most children never returned to class in the afternoons.
The activists handed over their reports to the president for consideration in the run-up to the preparation of the NRM manifesto, to be used in the 2016 elections.
However, since then the state has struggled to stay within its costs. A source privy to the reports has indicated that the state realised that it could not afford to provide school lunch to all the eight million children in primary school now and also run the rest of the education programmes.
“The programme would cost billions of shillings and the state did not have that kind of money … and things have not improved this year, if you consider the current budget cuts,” this source indicated.
Tuesday’s workshop had been aimed at organising a roadmap to develop and revise the Education and Sports Sector Strategic Plan 2016-2020.
The new plan will be aligned to the National Development Plan II (NDPII), Vision 2040 and other key national policy documents. It will also focus on quality education, equitable access to education, efficiency and effectiveness of delivery of education at all levels.
But the school lunch programme appears to have reared its ugly head in the way of plans for a new effort to revamp the education sector.
In declining the demands, officials in the education ministry suspect that the minister may be trying to ensure that she has enough funds to carry out her mandate.
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