The Directorate of Education Services in the Church of Uganda-COU wants the government to maintain and formalize cost sharing through the Parent Teacher’s Association-PTA in public and government-aided schools.
The COU officials made the proposal in their memoranda to the Education Policy Review Commission. They noted that PTA is essential for both running schools at a time when government funding is still paltry and encouraging parents to get involved in the education of their children.
While presenting their memoranda to the Nuwe Amanya Mushega-led Commission, Rev Dr. Paul Kakooza, the Director of Education Services in the COU province noted that the scrapping of PTA funds might create a crisis in schools in areas like feeding, which isn’t funded through the capitation grant.
According to Rev Dr. Paul Kakooza, the idea of complete free education might not be effective as some parents might fail to appreciate the value of education. He notes that although the state has a duty of offering education as a right to all children, this responsibility should be shared by the parent through cost-sharing.
Some parents, policymakers, and the president have openly challenged PTA fees, saying that the practice undermines the principles of Universal Education-UE as learners whose parents cannot afford to pay the set levies are driven out of school while others are denied the chance to attend top schools for a similar reason.
However, Dr. Kakooza notes that those opposed to PTA fees should also be aware that the same money is used to pay the salaries of teachers who are not on the government payroll. “And, incidentally, if you visit a school nowadays, you’ll find that the number of PTA-paid teachers is virtually greater than the number of employees. Due to the vast staffing deficits and rising student enrollment, this has occurred. Government cannot administer feeding programmes or provide the necessary teachers for all schools at once, nor can it address all the issues that require funding in schools. So why not share the burden with parents?” he asked.
In his book titled “History and Development of Education in Uganda”, JC Ssekamwa noted the 1987 Uganda education policy review commission had recommended a similar approach so that parents and the government share the financial burden of educating learners. However, at that time, it was mainly focused on university education.
Currently, the fees issue is critical and of late the ministry of education has found it hard to resolve it thus hiring a research team to interview parents, school administrators, and other interested parties around the nation to seek their views on the matter.
Amanya Mushega, the chairperson of the commissions also seemed to concur with the position of the church on the topic. Commenting on the submissions, Mushega also, a former Minister of Education noted that while the government is now bearing a disproportionate amount of the load, there are some minor issues that other actors, such as parents, can resolve
He went on to encourage the church to contribute in ways other than just giving up land. Mushega noted that he had seen decaying classrooms next to opulent churches.
In addition to the thoughts on fees, the church, which owns over 5,200 primary schools, and 630 secondary schools also requested that the government uses the current process to redefine the relationship between foundation bodies and the Ministry of Education.
The officials noted that the government is gradually taking control of their schools and marginalizing foundation bodies that are the de facto owners of these institutions. For instance, Dr. Kakooza cited the government’s recent attempt to stop church representatives from signing school accounts and asking for land titles noting such policies over time, led to conflicts and misunderstandings.
To have a lasting solution, the officials tasked the education review commission to recommend to the government that it establishes clear policies on the roles and functions of foundation bodies.
Mushega however noted that although their recommendation was documented, the church needed to be less subjective when referring to the aforementioned schools as “solely church property. He hastened to remind them that while it is true that the church has some degree of ownership, the majority of the infrastructure on the said schools was constructed using government funds.
The educationists from the Anglican Church of Uganda also suggested that there is a great need for a paradigm shift from the intense emphasis on “academics” towards the integration of vocational training, mainstreaming learning areas now referred to as co-curricular activities. Rev Dr. Kakooza pointed out that the existing education system is heavily focused on imparting academic knowledge creating degree holders who ultimately cannot contribute to their own development and that of the country in general.
Kakooza illustrated his point by citing how the school system has neglected the sports and entertainment industries despite the fact that they have enormous potential and are already driving up development in numerous nations throughout the world.
He believes that if such a component is introduced early in school, it may shape students at a young age and encourage innovation, thus it’s time to stop viewing them as co-curricular and start mainstreaming, teaching, and evaluating them instead.
John Fred Kazibwe, headteacher of Kings College Budo, however, added that while promoting vocational training, the ministry of education should not promote policies that can lead to churning out learners from the education system when they are still young. In his opinion, vocational institutions should be designed to only enroll students who have completed at least lower secondary education.
“Most of these institutions are preparing students for the workforce and sending them into it at a young age (possibly 12 considering that students exit primary seven when they are 10),” Kazibwe noted.
To strike the needed balance, the Anglican church educationist recommended that learners can take vocational subjects as part of their lower secondary curriculum and then have the option to either pursue vocational training or continue their formal education following their O’level.
This isn’t a new proposal as the 1992 white paper recommended the creation of comprehensive secondary schools that would provide a multipurpose curriculum fusing academics and vocational training. In the early 2000s, the government set out to implement the plan in 32 traditional schools, where they built laboratories, and workshops and delivered equipment worth billions of dollars.
However, most of these were left to waste and, before long, vocationalisation and making secondary school comprehensive suffered a natural death. It is alleged that the implementation was affected by politics, people’s mindsets, and the lack of financial and human resources. Twenty-eight years later, in 2020, the National Curriculum Development Centre came up with a new multi-purpose lower secondary curriculum looking at academic and vocational occupational subjects.
However, its implementation is still a tug-of-war as schools were not prepared enough for the curriculum before it was rolled out. In May 2021, the minister of education constituted the commission led by Nuwe Amanya Mushega to, among other things, inquire into and investigate the implementation of the recommendation in the Government White Paper on Education of 1992.
The commission was also tasked with addressing the bottlenecks afflicting the nation’s education system and matching it to the present global demand. Ever since this year began, the commission has been collecting views from different people and entities.
The process involved gathering written memoranda and recently they held a meeting to collect ideas and make further discussions on some of the recommendations brought before them.
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