Inspection, funding delays might affect school reopening dates

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Several schools might not be able to reopen as planned due to delays in inspection and release of the capitation grant. All education institutions were allowed to reopen for candidates and finalists after more than six months of a closure announced to keep COVID-19 at bay.

According to the pronouncement made by President Yoweri Museveni on September 20, the institutions are expected to reopen on October 15. This implies that they had less than 24 days to secure clearance from the Education Ministry that they are fit for reopening.

However, the final guidelines and standard operating procedures were not issued until after four days. The Ministry of Education also had to give schools at least a week to receive the guidelines to figure out what was was required of them before reopening.

But with just five days to the official reopening of schools, the Directorate of Education Standard is yet to issue compliance certificates and inspect a large number of schools in areas with a high concentration of learners. The exercise began on Monday, October 5, with an expectation that by Friday, October 9, some inspected schools will have a green light to admit students.

However, Benson Kule Babitazare, the overall leader of the school reopening and inspection team says that the earliest any school can obtain clearance will be October 13, two days before the official reopening date. Babitazare, who is also the commissioner secondary education standards says that all schools must have the said certificate of compliance before admitting learners.

But Josephine Ndagire, the headteacher at Faith Junior School says that the space of two days will not be enough to allow schools to have final touches and receive students.

“They had allowed boarding schools and institutions to receive learners earlier to stagger arrivals for large enrollments and avoid crowding. But with the way I see things, we shall have different reporting days,”  Ndagire says.

According to her, the reopening dates might be delayed by a week or even two. She however wonders whether the government will compensate the lost time by adjusting the school calendar. “As candidates return, each day is precious, now if reopening is delayed because of poor planning, then schools need to recover it,” she argues.

With over 35,000 educational institutions spread in 135 districts including primary and secondary school, teachers’ colleges and business, technical, vocational education and training institutions, there is limited manpower to pull off the load in the limited available time.

But instead, in districts like Wakiso, which has the highest concentration of schools, inspection started on October 8. After covering a few schools in Kasangati, the team of inspectors and associated assessors had to break off for independence day celebrations, which preceded a weekend. This means that the Wakiso inspection team will take three days to visit schools.

Fredrick Kiyingi Kinobe, the Wakiso District Education Officer, accepts that it is practically impossible to cover them even if they had two full weeks. Besides, the limited time ahead of the reopening dates, the department of inspection has a limited human resource, another challenge that is impeding the process.

Some districts have got two school inspectors and others have one. Wakiso, one of the biggest districts and a renowned school hub with over 1,692 primary schools, 580 secondary schools and 66 BTEVT institutions has only five inspectors.

Babitazare says that to bridge the human resource gap, they have decided to co-opt several local government staff. He also adds that they are developing a special inspection strategy for greater Kampala.

Meanwhile, as inspection goes on, most government schools have not put in place the required items corresponding to the different standard operating procedures.

Francis Ojulong from St Martins Primary school-Mulago shares that it is caused by the delay of getting finances from the government. Ojulong adds that the development may delay the approval of many government schools since they are not aware of when they will get the money.

Recently, the Ministry of Education confirmed that they had released over 32.6 billion Shillings to facilitate the schools reopening. Source says that on top of the capitation grant, each school has to receive 1.5 million Shillings to enable them to meet the required SOPs.

According to inspection guidelines, no school will be reopened without meeting at least 60 percent of the requirement of which indicators of the social distance of about two meters and the availability of handing washing facilities are critical.

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URN