Last week, the education ministry reverted to its old name - education and sports, while also receiving two new ministers. Another two ministers will soon step aside to make way for their replacements, while a third will change offices. MOSES TALEMWA looks ahead at what awaits the new team.
This week, Janet Museveni, Dr John Chrysostom Muyingo, Rosemary Nansubuga Seninde and Charles Bakkabulindi are scheduled to appear before parliament’s Appointments committee for approval as ministers for education.
If approved, Museveni will be taking over from Jessica Alupo as the senior minister, while Dr Muyingo returns to his old position as minister in charge of higher education. Also new to the ministry is Seninde as minister for primary education, while Bakkabulindi is the only one who is staying in his position as minister for sports.
While none of the quartet is new to the education sector, they can hope to start work, perhaps a week from now, in the full knowledge that some key challenges have been waiting for them for five years, some even longer.
PRIMARY EDUCATION
For nearly 10 years, Seninde was the chairperson of parliament’s Education committee. During that time, she was aware of the subsector’s low learning outcomes.
As a minister, she arrives on the back of another report from Uwezo, the education NGO, which shows, among so many humbling statistics, that nearly 74 per cent of all learners in P7 in state-aided primary schools are unable to read a P2-level storybook and solve a basic division problem.
Seninde is a strong advocate of quality standards in parliament; many in the sector will be hoping to see her steer primary school education away from disaster.
There are several reasons for these low outcomes, among them the inequitable distribution of teachers that sees many schools with high teacher-pupil rations that make learning impossible. Many rural schools see teachers trying and failing to teach a minimum of 100 pupils per class, yet their urban counterparts are doing much better at one teacher per 52 learners.
When she takes office next week, Seninde will be required to provide constructive answers to the puzzle of school lunch in primary schools across the country.
The current position forbids head teachers from charging for school lunch; however, it allows them to negotiate with the school management committee, on how a middle ground can be reached. In many parts of the country, this policy has failed, and many pupils eat little or nothing at school.
Seninde will also be required to find a solution to a long-standing puzzle over the impressive enrolment numbers under the universal primary education (UPE) programme. Critics are concerned that although 1.2 million children are enrolled at P1 on average, less than half of these make it to the end of the primary school cycle, in seven years.
The reasons for the high dropout rate are numerous, but some are related to poverty. Related to this, Seninde also has to find answers for school capitation grant. When she was in parliament, she was at the heart of concerns that the money going to this area was too little. But a finance ministry report now indicates that more than half (Shs 28bn) of the Shs 51bn allocated to schools as capitation grant never gets to its destination, as it is lost in corruption. The minister needs to find a solution.
Finally, Seninde’s docket will also need to address the perennial problem of teacher absenteeism. Since it was first addressed in 2010, under the auspices of Geraldine Namirembe Bitamazire, there has been some progress, but the general picture is still very bad. Many teachers are absent from work long parts of the term, which affects learning outcomes.
SECONDARY EDUCATION
Generally, Janet Museveni will be overseeing various aspects of the ministry. However, the secondary education subsector has been routinely ignored. Together with the primary education sector, this sector has suffered from a lack of sufficient infrastructure, but sometimes schools are also operating in poor conditions (some in tents, others under trees). The first lady will be required to find a workable solution to this problem, urgently.
The secondary school sector had been scheduled to embrace a new curriculum in 2017. Plans for the new syllabus were shelved amid complaints from various stakeholders about the lack of sufficient consultation on how to improve teaching in this area. Connected with this are plans for a revamp of the primary education syllabus.
The minister will be required to shepherd the process of improving the learning curriculum to fruition. The secondary education subsector is critical to the development of science careers. However, this is affected by the severe shortage of science teachers. The effort to retrain existing teachers and improve on the current crop of science teachers is in crisis, to put it mildly, and an urgent solution is required.
Connected with this is the confusion in the recruitment of teachers. Depending on who you talk to, the ministry is at times in the process of recruiting teachers, while others will say that there is a moratorium on recruitment. With schools suffering teacher shortages, this confusion needs to be cleared.
Finally, outgoing minister Jessica Alupo was instrumental in jumpstarting the training and examination of Information Technology (IT) at secondary school level. Her attitude, governed by the shortage of resources, was to start regardless and improve later. It is now time to rescue the training of IT at secondary school by rapidly improving the curriculum and providing competent trainers, aside from providing modern equipment.
HIGHER EDUCATION
Admittedly, Dr John Chrysostom Muyingo will be taking over a docket he has run previously. He takes over from the departing Prof Sandy Stevens Tickodri-Togboa. Dr Muyingo arrives at a time when calls for increased access to higher education are approaching deafening levels.
When he arrives in office next week, Dr Muyingo will find calls for more money to be dedicated to the students’ loan scheme to enable more learners join university. There have also been calls to phase out the State House scholarship and take these funds to the university loans scheme, to add to the number of needy but qualifying students seeking higher education.
Dr Muyingo will also be expected to provide answers about the ineffectual status of the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE). Without a home of its own, and substantial funding, the NCHE has not been able to recruit the required staff and provide the oversight expected at this level.
The minister will also be looked to for answers on inadequate funding infrastructure for higher education institutions. Poor funding to cater for hands-on training, is affecting Skilling Uganda, a major project that is hoped to enable the employability of several young people across the country. Dr Muyingo is a known advocate of Skilling Uganda and his answers will be expected.
He also needs to shepherd the process of establishing an international certification institute, something that will help the skills gap in the oil and gas sector in readiness for oil production.
SPORTS
Finally, Charles Bakkabulindi returns to his office to tackle pending challenges, left over from the last administration. These include enabling co-curricular activities in schools, through the provision of training fields (such as the Teryet high-altitude camp in Kapchorwa), trainers and sports-equipment.
He will also heed the call of poorly-funded national teams, while strengthening monitoring of various sports associations.
mtalemwa@observer.ug
The author is education editor at The Observer