Fundamental questions about high failures rates at PLE

The English language problem

Despite sufficient research to suggest that it is especially challenging for students with limited exposure to English outside of school to understand subject content delivered in an alien language, little effort has been put on discussing the issue of language and designing strategies to ensure that we reduce barriers to learning caused by the use of English as the medium of instruction in schools.

As Prof. Anders Breidlid observes in his research in many schools in Africa, teachers themselves are not any better in using the language. As such, many learners are receiving half of the information and cannot be possibly better than their teachers. Probably the government will need to design strategies to assess the competencies of the teachers through continuous assessments in their subject areas. How can children speak or write better than their teachers? The teaching of the academic language component, i.e. vocabulary, grammar, syntax, style, etc. is no easy task and calls for a deep understanding of the language which very few teachers have mastered.

When the results are released, the focus has often been on who got aggregate four or was in the first grade? In our view, there should be equal focus on those who failed as well. The newspapers or media houses that set and shape public agenda ought to put a spot light on these number of children failing so that it comes to the attention of the public and arouses a discussion on the issues in education.

We need to conduct a thorough examination of our system and ask ourselves why learners under performed. Was it a failure to master the specific content in the subject area, or are they failing language comprehension?  Did students fail science and Maths or students did not understand what was required of them in the test? If they did not understand the subject content? What was the cause? Did teachers cover the curriculum? Are supervisors doing their job? How do we know the teachers did their job?

Examining teachers

In future, we may probably at a mid-level like primary four need a national examination to examine the subject knowledge content of pupils since material is delivered in the local language and compare with their performance at primary seven where subject content is delivered in the English language.

Perhaps this will provide a better basis for further discussion on the importance of considering the use of local languages or code switching at a higher level than we are currently using. It is clear from the results that pupils are having issues understanding subject content because of the limited knowledge of the language in which subject content is delivered.

This year, another 82,973 children will fail and will probably drop out. May be we need to refine this question to: Are children dropping out of school, or are schools kicking children out?

Throughout primary, most teachers have focused on the receptive language skills (e.g., listening, reading) than the productive language skills e.g., speaking, writing. The later would be useful in communities where students use the same language outside the classroom. As it is now, most pupils only find English in the classroom and that is where it ends. How can this ‘school language’ which is different from the community language be a channel into one which students or learners are expected to think and communicate ideas, relationships that are beyond the classroom environment or what they have learnt, seen and observed both in and outside classroom?

Unless learners are proficient in the medium of instruction, it is dangerous to introduce other subject content in that language because it would mean that we are spending enormous resources on pupils who are not learning.

On average, the government of Uganda spends Shs7000 per year per child in UPE. UNEB reports that 77% of all candidates were in UPE schools. So assuming we take the 77% of the number of those who failed, it comes to 63,889 pupils. This means that since 2009 when these children enrolled in primary one, the government has spent over three Shs3 trillion on educating them.

It could be more since the government also spends money on providing infrastructure, roads, and other social services in support of access to education for these children. As it turns out, it was all a waste and the grading of these children as failures/ungraded is going to have lasting impact on their esteem and standing in society.

That we lost over shs3 trillion in 7 years should make us reflect on how much we have to do to avoid future loses. This may be the actual cost of failing to use a language which children understand and that can facilitate proper understanding.

This year, another 82,973 children will fail and will probably drop out. May be we need to refine this question to: Are children dropping out of school, or are schools kicking children out?

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Henry Mutebe is a postgraduate student at Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences in Norway