‘UPE not just for the President’

Jan 22, 2008

IT is now about 10 years since Universal Primary Education (UPE) was introduced in Uganda courtesy of President Yoweri Museveni. I have made a slight follow up of it, especially in the rural areas.

Your Platform

By Tonny Kizza

IT is now about 10 years since Universal Primary Education (UPE) was introduced in Uganda courtesy of President Yoweri Museveni. I have made a slight follow up of it, especially in the rural areas.

It is a good venture but many times it has not been supported to bring out good results; instead there are many who indirectly fight it.

In my experience with pupils from the rural setting, I can comment that, basing on the environment they study in, they are brighter than those in urban settings and I have the following argument:
We know that a year is made up three terms of three months each.

However, a pupil from the rural setting does not start school immediately the term is opened, has to wait for about two weeks, reason being that there are no teachers and pupils are busy cleaning the school. Many caretakers say there is no studying at school yet and they keep the pupils home to do house chores and gardening. The last two weeks of the term are not studied as well, after pupils have finished exams.

This means, therefore that a term of three months, a pupil has missed a full month without studying and so, studying is only for two months, forgetting other things that might stop him from going to school. You find that a term which should have at least nine months of study, they only utilise six.

Primary education takes seven years to complete but due to time wasting as explained above, in these years a pupil instead of studying for 63 months, ends up having studied only for 43 - after deducting holidays. The 63 months means seven years and 43 months is 3.5 years.

With this, I am right to say that a UPE pupil in a rural area writes the Primary Leaving Exams in P.4 or even for others before that. And it is very interesting because they pass. The remaining months and years are just wasted. This is not the case with a pupil in an urban school, where they study from the first to the last day, not forgetting night and early morning study. UPE is not only the work of the President, ministers of education and teachers. We should all support it.

The writer is a teacher and counsellor

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});