COVID-19 complicates education

Learning going on in urban areas and western region

However, the situation is different with their counterparts in urban areas; especially in the greater Kampala City and some districts in western Uganda such as Kagadi, Kibale, Kakumiro and Mbarara.

Though scenes of learners in gardens or selling items are visible in some areas, most of them here are learning in groups of three or four with the help of teachers in their communities.

However, this comes at an extra fee; between Shs 15,000 to Shs 50,000 per week, depending on the level of learners and the parent’s social-economic status. Some learners attend classes via the American video-telephony service Zoom. They all use TV, radio and printed materials in newspapers as supplements.

But, as teacher Jungu of Kampala Parents acknowledges, even here some learners are unable to attend online lessons as result of the costs involved.

“In this situation, we do post what we have covered in the syllabus on our school website so that parents can access it, print and have their children do the assignments that they later return for marking and guidance,” he says.

Narrowing the widened gap

Dr. Mary Goretti Nakabugo, the head of Twaweza and Uwezo; two NGOs involved in research in the education sector, told The Independent in an interview that there’s need for the government and other concerned organisations to  narrow the worsened gap with regard to access to education between the  urban and the disadvantaged and  rural-based learners.

She said it is the only way to minimize the social-economic difference that could emerge in future as the country risks losing a generation as a result of COVID-19. She said many children could fail to return to school.

Art of a Child; a local NGO committed to uplifting the voice of children, says more than 2,372 teenage pregnancies have been recorded during this pandemic period by early late November in Kitgum, Ngora, Kyegegwa, Kasese and Lyantonde districts.

At least 128 school-age girls have been married off in the Kyegegwa, Rakai and Luweero Districts alone as families seeks to alleviate financial burdens of the pandemic.

Nakabugo revealed that the huge gap between the rural and urban areas in terms of access to education, the poor and the rich, predates COVID-19. But it has worsened. She says according to their annual surveys, majority of the learners in the poor households, mainly in rural areas are always not learning at their level.

Decline in literacy and numeracy

This development comes at the time the issue of poor performance of learners in primary and secondary school levels in rural areas remains unresolved for decades, leaving millions of learners without proper molding of their minds into well-grounded citizens for competitive and broader platform on the world stage.

Nakabugo cites Uwezo Uganda’s latest Learning Assessment Report released in 2019 that indicates that learning outcomes in literacy and numeracy have remained low, with little, if any signs of improvement. Instead there was a sharp decline in literacy and numeracy levels of Primary 3 to Primary 6 pupils between 2015 and 2018.

Gorreti said the situation is being exacerbated by  the fact that the government’s alternative option in which learners were to receive the printed study materials reached to only 25% of the learners.

Indeed, a study carried out by Joyce Bukirwa, a lecturer at Makerere University in June this year dubbed ‘Information Seeking Behavior of Secondary school students during lockdown in Uganda’ noted that 84.97% of students who participated said the learning materials distributed by the education ministry were inadequate.

Further, 42.9% of the correspondents said the content was inadequate, whereas 33.8% said the reading materials were brief and largely revision content.  The study also noted that 18% of the students said the subjects were not well balanced and that there was insufficient information on the time the lessons were on air.

“The timetables for radio and television were not properly communicated. Some students said they missed out because of the wrong timing,” she said.

Similarly, another study carried out by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics in August this year shows that lack of equitable distribution of education materials, no access to TVs or radio and increased home chores to stay-home learners, has widened the rural-urban education gap.

The study which targeted 2,421 households, interviewing 2,227 households in round one, and 2,199 in round two, representing 99% response rate, showed that not much learning was taking place at household level.

“In round one, we had 59% who had accessed learned materials and in round two, we have 60%,” said Stephen Baryahirwa, the acting director of the Directorate of Social-Economic Surveys at the Uganda Bureau of Statistics.

He said even those learners that reported to have got learning materials, majority of them are in urban areas.