Education Ministry revising School Management Committee guidelines

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Education and Sports Ministry has embarked on the process of revising School Management Committee-SMCs guidelines. According to the Education Ministry, the revision of the guidelines is expected to be completed by the end of first term and will be rolled out in October 2020.

Schools are mandated to establish a 13 member SMC committee. However, Dr. Tony Mukasa Lusambu, the Assistant Commissioner of Basic Education, says currently many SMCs are dormant because most of them do not know their roles.

He says they have started revising the guidelines to make the SMCs functional.

Dr. Lusambu says apparently most SMCs comprise of members without vested interest in schools because of the way they are appointed. Any member of a community can be appointed to serve on a SMC.

In addition to this, the new guidelines are going to streamline the terms of office for SMCs nationally.

According to Dr. Lusambu to make sure that SMCs are fully functional in every school across the country, they will be appointed at the same time for the same duration of time.

As it stands now, members are voted when and if a school decides to have a SMC. According to Dr. Lusambu, in some schools SMCs have been serving for the last ten years without any changes.

With the passing of the 2008 education act that made it mandatory for all schools to have SMCs, other governing bodies like the Parent Teacher’s Association-PTA were abolished.  In the proposed revised guidelines, the ministry is going to reintroduce PTAs to work hand in hand with SMCs.

One of the areas of contention with PTAs was termly contributions that all learners were required to pay. When asked whether the fees will be standardised or removed, Dr. Lusambu says that they are working on having PTAs that do not require funds to run.

“Our biggest aim is to get parents involved in what is happening in schools. We want them to make decisions on what is going on. We believe this will improve the learning environment of all learners. So, for now we are looking at a way that we can get parents involved without money exchanging hands,” Dr. Lusambu explained.

PTA contributions used to supplement on government to schools. Asha Najjiku, the Secretary General Federation of Education NGOs in Uganda-FENU, says it is important to revise the roles of SMCs because most of them are not independent. She says that most had become tools that head teachers manipulate to get what they want.

“As it stands now, most SMCs don’t know their roles. You find many chairmen carrying the head teacher’s briefcase. They had become yes men for head teachers because most of them do not know their roles or are educated enough to know what is going on. Some feel they cannot say anything because they are not as educated as the head teachers, “she said.

Patrick Kaboyo, the National Secretary Federation of Non-State Education Institutions-FENEI says revising the SMCs guidelines will improve the quality of education. He says many schools have deteriorated because the SMCs that have been running them couldn’t do anything.

“How can you have people running a school when they cannot read or write? What kind of decisions do you expect someone who has never stepped in a class room to make? Schools that were prominent during the era of PTA have gone down because some SMCs had uneducated people on the committee. The people could not even make decisions and they left this role to head teachers,” Kaboyo said.

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