YOUR CHILD’S TEACHER 

DO THEY HAVE THE RIGHT  QUALIFICATIONS?

BY CAROL NATUKUNDA

Three plus four?” the teacher asks, as her pupils scribble the answer on their slates. “Good, good,” she tells them, then stops at the desk of a little boy holding his slate upside down.

“When you hold it like that, it is letter L. Hold it like this. What is the answer?”

“Seven!” the boy answers, before the class yells the same in unison.

About 30 minutes later, the teacher has switched to the English lesson, before leading the class in singing. A ‘jack of all trades’ is what best describes the teachers at the Kulwa Kaamu Education Centre, which sits on a desolate patch in Nabweru, Kawempe, a Kampala suburb.

Despite its enthusiasm to offer education to this rural community, the school is desperate for teachers. And not just teachers but specialised ones. Currently, there are only three teachers, including the founder, Christine Nsubuga, who also doubles as the headteacher. The three teach all subjects — Mathematics, Science, Social Studies and English, even though their area of specialty was perhaps just one of these.

But it is unclear how this school or other little-known ones like it will be able to get the required well-trained and specialised teachers.

Like many African countries, Uganda is unable to build schools in every village. The country encourages private individuals to build their own schools and hire their own teachers. But it appears that teachers in such schools are either teaching subjects they did not specialise in, or are not trained.

Nsubuga, for instance, uses volunteers — as long as they have completed high school. At 60, she is ripe for retirement, but is hanging in there, so she can support her only two staff members. “I cannot afford to give my teachers a salary,’” she says, “We need highly-qualified teachers, but they would not come to a village school without a salary. So when I get someone ready to volunteer, I thank God.”

At Banda Primary School, Kireka, the “good” teachers do not last long. So in some cases, the school authorities bank on students doing teaching practice or those on vacation. “Six teachers have left in the last two years. One went for upgrading; while others went into private business. We now have 13 teachers and about 270 pupils,” says Ibrahim Haswa, the school’s headteacher.

“The students, especially those on S.6 vacation come in to help us. Last term we had eight of them. And if they want to continue assisting us, we are okay with it,” Haswa says.

Uganda ’s teacher training system produces 7,080 qualified primary school teachers annually. These are teachers that pass the Grade III licensing exam, after a two-year training course. Another 3,518 qualified teachers for lower secondary pass the Kyambogo Secondary Education exam and approximately 7,373 graduates obtain education degrees annually.

But despite the seemingly large number of trained teachers in Uganda, only 20% of those who qualify annually accept the positions in the schools, according to USAID’s research programme, the Educational Quality Improvement Programme. And for these few teachers to keep working in the schools is only wishful thinking.

The World Bank report concedes: “A significant proportion of the newly-qualified teachers do not take teaching positions. Instead, they take other jobs such as positions in the Police force, nursing or the army.”

Although there is no accurate data on this “wastage,” it leaves most schools with no choice but to rely on untrained contract personnel who volunteer to teach.

Where are the ‘real’ teachers?
Low salary and poor working conditions cause teachers to leave the field within one to three years of entering the service, teachers confess.

“You could have a family to feed and have to rent a house which is a long distance from your school. But you only receive sh200,000 a month,” says Mohammed Masaba, a teacher who is currently working at a research bureau in Kampala. “We have to be honest about that. So you can only teach for three years, get Entandikwa and move on to something new.”

Masaba also says some teachers are discouraged when they are posted to hard-to-reach areas. These difficulties arise because of lack of professional development opportunities and incentives and inadequate professional support and supervision.

It is against this background that contract teachers and volunteers are coming in to fill the need. They do not only have the passion to teach, but their salaries also tend to be a quarter or half of the amount paid to permanent teachers.

In Benin, a volunteer teacher costs $705 (about sh1.4m) a year, a community teacher $300, (about sh600,000) and a civil service teacher $3,011 (about sh6m). In Niger, where only contract teachers are being recruited, their starting salary is half that of regular teachers. In Senegal, they earn less than a fifth of the salary of civil service teachers.

But while the financial advantages of hiring volunteers and untrained personnel are clear, parents and critics worry about the quality of education their children receive.

When Margaret Baingana recently asked her Primary Four daughter and niece to tell her what time it was, she was surprised at the responses she got. “It was 10:00am, but my daughter was saying it was 4:00am. I asked my niece with whom she studies and I was shocked when she also said it was 4:00am. You are going to P.5 and you don’t know how to read the clock? Their English is also poor,” Baingana says.

But there was one problem — her children’s school in Masaka never hired trained teachers for the lower primary section. Anyone, from a Senior One to three dropout, who had interest in teaching, would do it — regardless of the fact that they were probably failures in one of the subjects.

“Next year,” Baingana vows, “I am taking them to another modern school and back to Primary One! I will pay through the nose , but at a school I am sure has the best teachers.”

Sharon, 40, was glad to enroll her child in a nearby primary school which had friendly teachers. But her excitement was short-lived. The teachers — being merely volunteers — only spent their time gossiping, after all they were not entitled to a salary. So by Primary Three, Sharon’s child only knew how to “sing the alphabet.”

Uganda has 127,117 primary school teachers on the payroll which is insufficient to keep pace with the pupil enrollment at 7.5million. While the one option would be to upgrade and professionalise untrained contract teachers, such a measure would put a strain on the education budgets.

The education ministry can only afford to recruit 2,000 teachers every year, says the spokesperson, Aggrey Kibenge. “We have budget constraints but are trying to have as many qualified teachers as possible,” he says. “We are aware that some teachers lack the qualifications and we are trying to iron out the problem. We appeal to the private sector to work with us.”

Way forward
There is need to urgently enact policies providing for the upgrade and professionalism of volunteer teachers to guarantee the quality of teachers and their work. This would help to ensure that whether teachers are volunteers or not, they have an area of expertise. “Besides, this would reduce the low morale caused by forced deployment. Often, the volunteers already have the will to teach,” reveals the Education For All report.

Teacher performance should also be monitored at the school level. Kibenge says headteachers are expected to monitor teacher performance constantly and provide a formal appraisal on an annual basis.

He also says all primary schools must have school management committees to assist in gauging the standards of their staff.

HOW BIG IS THE PROBLEM?
Untrained and volunteer teachers account for 50% of the teaching workforce in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the 2008 Education For All global monitoring report. Although statistics in Uganda are scanty, there were about 12,856 untrained teachers in Ugandan schools in 2005, according to a 2008 World Bank report titled “Teachers for Rural Schools: Experiences in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda.”

Sub-Saharan Africa will need more than 1.3million trained teachers by 2015 to meet the standards of primary education, projections by the World Bank and United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation show.

Statistics also show that teacher recruitment, retention and deployment are insufficient and inefficient.