Weep Not, Child; A story of a UPE pioneer from Kigarama

Jun 30, 2017

Simply put, this boy was born in a fairly not poor but also not rich family.

By Alexander Kyokwijuka

One of the things I cherished back then in school, was the non academic educational experience in our earlier primary education.

In this piece therefore, I wish to tell a story of a small boy from Kigarama village in Kabale District. This boy may not have been the most remarkable in his village but his perspective of the social realities at that time is still relevant even in understanding the realities around us today.

Simply put, this boy was born in a fairly not poor but also not rich family, you can consider an average village family that had at least some family members having gone through the formal education and some of them had become teachers (the most admired profession in that village and many others at that time).

From my Sociology of Education classes at Makerere University, children derive inspiration from their first role models who are parents and the immediate family. Whether this boy would therefore aspire to become a teacher just like his immediate role models is something we shall discover as we go down this story. For the record, I am quoting Kigarama village because over 80% of Uganda's populations leave in the rural areas and rural employment constitutes of mainly agriculture.

According to the World Bank, 71.7% of our population is employed in agriculture as of 2013 and this figure may have already changed. But do we really go by this assertion as a nation? Your guess is as good as mine, and this sentiment is shared among many right thinking Ugandans.

In 1997, the Government of Uganda then would issue an order that all children aged 5 and above should go to school lest parents would be arrested. This was at the wake of the introduction of the Universal Primary Education (UPE). It should be remembered that at that time in Kigarama Village, children would in most cases go to school for fear of paying graduated tax, which one would qualify for once they made 18 years of age.

Memories of LDU men chasing after young men in the wee hours of the day for failure to pay tax are still fresh in my mind. This boy thus joined school since he was 8 years of age. Under the UPE programme, the Government of Uganda abolished all tuition fees and Parents and Teachers Association charges for primary education. Following its introduction, gross enrolment in primary school increased from 3.1 million in 1996 to 7.6 million in 2003. This amounts to an increase of 145% (4.5 million children), compared to an increase of 39% (0.9 million children) between 1986 and 1996.

This is despite the fact that primary education was not made compulsory, nor was it made entirely free, since parents were still expected to contribute pens, exercise books, clothing, and even bricks and labour for classroom construction (Inter-Regional Inequality Facility Policy brief, 2006).

School life was very interesting notwithstanding the change in environment. One of the remarkable experiences was hand work in which pupils had to engage in hand making of certain home crafts like baskets, mats, winnowing trays, bee hives, mingling sticks, and in some advanced instances, pots and other clay made statues. Whereas these were great initiatives that would improve the innovativeness in the young stars, the story telling in class would instill confidence and self expression skills in the young ones.

I remember this young boy would be given an office chair (as we used to call it at Kigarama Primary School to mean any type of chair apart from a bench) every Tuesday to sit in front of the whole class to tell a story, which his mother would have told him the previous night.

Do modern parents still sit with their children to tell them a story which they can share in class the following day? Not anymore, parents today only help the young ones to do home work and they present answers to the teacher the following day to mark. But do teachers still initiate these activities?

Not anymore, they are paid little and the better part of their time, they are complaining or hovering elsewhere to make ends meet.

Does this worry you as a Ugandan citizen, leader, or even sympathizer/well-wisher? Are we still asking therefore why things are not right? Do we also ask ourselves why 68% of children in who enroll in primary school are likely to drop out before finishing the prescribed seven years? Fortunately this little boy is not part of this cohort. Have we heard of funding challenges for the education system in Uganda, especially at primary level?

Well, under the leadership of the Chief Administrative Officers (CAOs), local authorities are responsible for ensuring that all UPE funds released to them by the MoES reach schools and are not retained for any other purposes. UPE funds are therefore conditional grants, over which district authorities have little power of reallocation to other uses.

The CAOs are also responsible for ensuring prompt disbursement of UPE grants to schools, proper accountability of UPE grants, the formulation of the education budget and its successful fulfillment, and adequate briefing of District Councils on the implementation of UPE. Sub-county chiefs represent the CAOs at the sub-county level.
They make regular visits to schools, implement local government byelaws on UPE, keep a record of both pupils and teachers in the sub county, submit regular reports on education to the CAOs, ensure safe water and sanitation in schools, and in schools under their jurisdiction, enforce proper use and accountability for UPE grants and public funds.

Who then, should we blame for the misfortune in the UPE system? How many of these children are affected each year and how many should we count on to take charge of this country years to come?

The writer is the little boy talked about in the article and is the executive director of the Youth Aid Africa

 

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