Parents irked as schools close before Ministry of Education set dates

Mukono, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Some parents are not happy with schools that have decided to close before the official closing date of April 15th, 2022 as earlier communicated by the government.

According to the national school and institution calendar, the schools term was supposed to operate for a total of 14 weeks instead of the usual 12 weeks to enable learners to catch up following two years of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As such, learners who reported to school on January 10th, 2022, are expected to leave school for the first term holidays on April,15. But some schools have decided to send the learners back much earlier.

Now parents are not happy with this decision saying that schools are reaping them off by sending their children back home earlier than they should.

Many say that since learners spent two years at home, schools should be using the extra allocated two weeks to teach children instead of sending them back home.

Annet Ankunda, a mother of a child in S3 who was sent back home this week says some schools are acting unprofessionally. According to Ankunda, if it were possible, learners would not even be given holidays since they had two years at home.

Another parent, James Mulwana says that such actions taken by schools affect both the learners and the parents who pay school fees.

A head teacher that Uganda Radio Network spoke to intimated that some of the schools were closed because they had opened two weeks earlier before the government allocated date of January 10th. As such they argue that releasing learners one or two weeks earlier than the scheduled date should not be a cause of concern since no learning time will be lost by closing early.

Lawrence Ssemujju, the deputy head teacher of City Secondary School located in Wakiso district says they are planning on closing on April 8th since they opened on January 5th. According to him,  the learners have covered what was intended to be covered in the first term and there is no reason to keep them longer at school.

However, a S3  student that we spoke to from Midland Secondary School who was sent home early this week, says while she is happy to be back home she wishes they had stayed at school to learn more.

“At school, the teachers mostly concentrated on English and History. Every day we would study art subjects but no science ones. We were told that the teachers for Maths and Physics would come later but now we have been sent home. I want to be a doctor when I grow up and I wish I could have remained at school to be taught,” she said.

Mulwana says instead of the government continuously issuing warnings to schools that violate rules and policies, they should start closing them so that the education sector remains with service providers interested in teaching and not just making money.

Similarly, Veronica Nakalema, a parent and also a leader in Mulago Parish says that the act of some schools closing earlier than the official date should attract punishment by the Ministry of Education and Sports.

According to Nakalema, some parents go through a lot to get the fees expecting their children to learn fully based on the calendar. She adds that schools are doing this to save on the expense of both the learners and their parents.

Dr. Joyce Moriku Kaduccu, the State Minister in charge of primary education, says that breaking off before the official date is illegal and might attract sanctions given the fact that schools are expected to respect the calendar.

Dr. Kaduccu adds that schools, more so those in private sector, should be considerate to the parents whom they charged an arm and a leg during reopening in the name of expanded time.

****

URN