The education system needs more than a UNEB review

By Patrick Ajuna

THE revelation by Fagil Mandy, the newly appointed Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) chairman, of their intentions to review the existing system of setting and administering national examinations to improve the quality of learning is welcome.

Over the years, UNEB has been recycling examination questions at all levels it examines and this practice has had some of implications.

This encouraged many schools to divert from the teaching syllabus that is ideally intended to promote learning in all its three domains that is, cognitive (imparting knowledge), affective (positive attitude change) and psychomotor (skills development) to concentrating on questions and answer approach of teaching that orients the learners to reproduce in an exam the points given during the lesson with little room for reasoning.

Secondly, defective learning methods ranging from cram work to selective reading (spot work), reliance on pamphlets and ‘UNEB making guides’ which gives the learners very shallow information, to the pressure on teachers from schools administration to teach very fast in order to cover the ‘syllabus’ with little regard to learners’ comprehension of what is being taught have characterised many schools today. 

This is due to competition among schools to get good grades and rankings in order to get publicity in the media which is normally done whenever UNEB releases the results.

Much as it is necessary to review UNEB’s method of assessment to make it unpredictable as Mandy puts it, it is equally important to simultaneously address a number of other issues if significant reforms are to be made to make our education system relevant. For instance;

There is no particular government policy to be followed by private schools on the issue of school fees charges as they are left to act on their own volition. 

The result of this has been the exploitation of parents since most proprietors of these schools do not invest this money to provision of minimum facilities required for effective teaching and learning but just operate purely as business entities driven by profit motive. 

Once some three students out of as many as 200 candidates pass in division one, they get satisfied with the results.

In addition, most private schools do not have qualified teachers. While some of them rely on university students and unqualified teachers, others depend on part time teachers from other schools who are not reliable. 

Those that manage to employ qualified teachers do not pay them or give them very little money if at all they happen to pay. The practice has been recruitment of new teachers as others get dissatisfied and leave. Such an environment cannot facilitate effective learning.

All this happen because there is little inspection done in schools. In the eight years of teaching in private schools in Kampala, Kyenjojo, Fort Portal and Wakiso, at no single time did I see any inspector of schools visiting our school. One wonders, why can’t the authorities at the districts and the ministry compel these people in the inspectorate department to do their work to the satisfactory level?

It is high time the authorities realised the urgency in comprehensively addressing the challenges in our current education system. It is through this way that good innovations or relevant curriculum that suits the present needs of Uganda will be realised.

The following, I believe, could help in this endeavour.

•     In addition to the need to overhaul and restructure our education system and curriculum at all levels, there is need to reinforce the inspection department in the education if the ineffectiveness of this department has been due to insufficient manpower.

•     UNEB should also help in this endevour (inspection) and do it abruptly at intervals because some schools borrow the science laboratory equipment and library books at the time of UNEB inspection to get examination centres and they return them back after the inspection. In reality, many private schools do not have the minimum facilities required by education ministry and UNEB.

•     Also, a comprehensive policy to be followed by private schools on issues of staffing, school fees, physical structures, teaching and learning materials, staff salaries among others should be put in place and strict adherence to minimum standards be enforced.

•     The ministry of education should pass a resolution to compel all schools to display their results on their notice boards so as to enable parents and students make the right decision. Some schools publish misleading results in the media to attract customers while others hide the results from even their own teachers.

The writer is an Educational Policy Analyst