Can Ugandan children do without kindergarten?

Disastrous home schooling

But, Muhindo confesses that his home schooling experience of her daughter has not been that good. As soon as the lockdown began, he says, the school where his girl studies got in touch with all parents telling them that they would work together to ensure children continue learning.

“The school would share every month teaching materials via WhatsApp. We would then print the work and teach our daughter at home and then deliver the work for marking every week,” Muhindo told The Independent, “Whenever they were introducing new topics, they would share videos so children watch and learn with the parents’ guidance.”

“We continued until December when the school sent an assignment that was used to assess the learners and assess them. So, Justine (his daughter) who had just been in “Baby Class” for one-and-half-months eventually passed and she is now in Middle Class.” But Muhindo says one of the lessons he has learnt from the time with his daughter is that teaching is a calling.

“It is not about knowing the content but there is art involved. The first time I tried to help my daughter was not funny. You are telling the child to do something and she sees what you are telling her but she just cannot do it,” Muhindo says.

“She was doing the opposite and sometimes if you are not patient, you get irritated. Home schooling can easily damage the relationship the child has with their parents because you are playing a role that is not yours.”

“Parents have to be extremely conscious and sensitive because it can ruin the relationship a parent has with the children,” said Muhindo, “A strained relationship can be irreparable. The anger that can be caused because of you playing teacher can spill over to the natural relationship as a parent.”

“I had to stop teaching her because I was being so tough on my daughter due to lack of patience which I believe her teachers are expected to have.” Muhindo says the decision has been reached upon haphazardly without research or policy analysis.”

Ampeire who has handled nursery school children for over 15 years told The Independent that teaching 2-4 year olds is not easy. Ampeire said she has come to learn that these children listen more to teachers than their parents on issues academic.

She says she often listens to parents telling her that the nursery-going children sometimes challenge their parents if they feel they are being misled, for instance, on letter sounds. “The child will say that is not how our teacher told us to pronounce that sound,” Ampeire said. This explains why pre-school is important for children irrespective of where they live. Filbert Baguma, the General Secretary of the Uganda National Teachers Union (UNATU) told The Independent on Feb.12 that pre-school is the foundation for formal education.

“Studies have shown that children who start with pre-primary generally do better when compared to those who walk straight from home into Primary One,” Baguma said, “That explains the difference in performance between rural-based and urban/ peri-urban children.”

For Marie Nanyanzi, a care giver, the reason why it is important for pre-school children to be in a school environment is for them to learn socialization skills.

“It is here that the young children get to learn a common language like English which is the official language used in Ugandan schools. It is here that they also get prepared and formed for the tasks they will encounter in the upper classes,” she says.

“If the children miss out on pre-school, then you give the teachers a hard time to re-align these children. Teachers are going to be in a situation that teachers in refugee camps face. Here, children from different countries and communities suddenly find themselves in one school and a teacher has to start from scratch to forge a common language to use in class.”

Gertrude Nalubinga, a Senior Programme Officer for Advocacy and Communication at Uganda Community Based Association for Women and Children (UCOBAC) also told The Independent on Feb.12 that pre-schooling or pre-school programmes have a high potential of positively impacting children’s learning and development.

However, Nalubinga explains that these effects are highly dependent on continued participation in the programmes. Suspension of the early childhood classes by the government is likely to greatly affect young children’s learning and retarding their progress, she said.

“The majority of the parents do not possess the patience nor the skills or knowledge to educate these young ones in the education curriculum. Their level of concentration is too low for them to effectively learn from electronic mechanisms of teaching which have taken precedence,” Nalubinga told The Independent.

A 2016 briefing paper prepared by the Budget Monitoring and Accountability Unit in the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development noted that early childhood care and education for which pre-primary education is a constituent part is widely recognized as a critical period in children’s physical, mental and psycho-social development. The paper noted that young children (0-8) years need to be nurtured in a safe and caring environment that allows them to become healthy, alert, secure and able to learn.

More research conducted by the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) in 2013 showed that Uganda’s benefit to cost ratio for pre-primary education is 1.6 meaning that money invested in pre-primary schooling has a return of 60% in terms of future incomes, productivity and health.

The UNICEF study, for instance, showed that for every Shs 1000 invested in Universal Primary Education (UPE), the government loses Shs 600 because majority of the children have not accessed pre-primary education.

In 2015, only about only 433,258 children were able to access early childhood education yet there were over 5 million aged 3-5 years children meaning that for every 100 children of pre-school going age (3-5 years) only 9 were enrolled. This translated into a gap of 90.5%. These children wait until they are 6 years to join primary education most especially those in the rural communities.

This is partly because over the years, preschool has been left to local NGOs and faith based  organisations including churches and mosques, individuals and communities. But experts say leaving provision in the hands of private providers has had many negative consequences.