ANALYSIS: What’s wrong in education?

‘Time to rethink our education strategies’

With such appalling findings for six consecutive years, one would wonder what surveys like these attempt to achieve. Seeking answers, The Independent spoke to veteran educationalist Prof. Lutalo Bbosa.

He said the Uwezo reports offer recommendations which government should be able to use to improve the education system but they are never used.

“We test, assess, but don’t use the outcomes got,” he said.

But Bbosa says there is an even bigger concern now that the government should be focusing on: how prepared teachers are to prepare learners for tomorrow.

“This is the main reason why children go to school,” he said, “Some of the teachers can’t tell or are not bothered about whether their student is learning or not.”

He said the government should be figuring out what it will take for teachers not just to come to school every day but also for them to pay attention to what exactly learners’ needs are through consistent assessment.

The report gives clues to these. Even with the ideal and government target of pupil to teacher ratio is 40:1, the report found the national average at 46:1, 56:1 in Eastern Uganda and 58:1 in Northern Uganda.Teacher presence was higher in private schools at 90.4% whereas it stood at 82.4% in government schools with presence being better in central and western regions. While majority of the teachers had pre-service training, 54%   had received in-service training in the last two years. Up to 30% of schools had teachers trained in special needs.

Bbosa notes that in-service training is very important for professional growth and development considering how dynamic society is. He advised that policies as automatic promotion and class repetition are rethought because they are problematic to both the learner and the economy. While class repetition wastes resources, automatic promotion of a child without acquiring intended knowledge is more disastrous.

“The solution is ensuring that teaching is made more effective attending to all needs of the child, something experts refer to as holistic learning,” he said.

Robinson Nsumba – Lyazzi, the Director Basic Education at Ministry of Education says one of the indicators that they take reports such at Uwezo’s seriously is the recently launched Early Childhood Development (ECD) program which they hope will cater for the much advocated for ‘holistic learning’. He said under this program, children are prepared better for primary school. Uwezo has in the past reported that children who attend pre-school perform better in primary school.

In the Fifth Learning Assessment report launched in April, researchers found P.3 pupils who attended a form of ECD program or a Kindergaten were three times more likely to read a Primary Two level story than those who did not. It also showed that children who attended Kindergarten were more likely to enter Primary School at the correct age of six years than their counterparts who did not.

At least 63% of those who attended Kindergarten were in Primary One at age six; compared to only 51% of those who did not. The latest report offers close results.   It shows 47% of pupils who attended pre-primary school could read compared to 32% who had not.

Margret Rwabushaija, the chairperson Parliamentary Forum on Quality Education who is also a former chairperson of UNATU differed from the rest who blame policies, teachers and education stakeholders. She said learning outcomes go hand in hand with the learning environment which is why we see stark disparities between regions. She said regions where issues of hunger, disease and insecurity have recently been reported perform worst. She says once these areas are improved, the results are different.

However, while experts differ on what should be prioritized, they all agree that instead of using access as a yardstick to measure success in education, learning outcomes should be considered.

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editor@independent.co.ug