Is the rush for gov’t boarding schools worth it?

By Carol Natukunda
IT sounds like a cliche. Every year, traditional schools top the list of best performers in the national examinations. St. Mary’s Namagunga had 98.6% first grades, followed by St. Mary’s College Kisubi with 98.28%.

Other schools with top notch performance last year included were Ntare School, Namilyango college, Kings College Budo, Gayaza High School, Nabisunsa Girls School St. Mary’s College Kitende. The new school on the list is Uganda Martyrs’ SS Namugongo which had 99.5% students in Division One. Seeta High school in Mukono ,which was not in existence a decade ago is also competing with the top schools.

What makes such schools excel? Is it that they have the best teachers, the best facilities in place and brightest children?

According to Sr. Justin Paul, the headteacher of Mount St Mary’s Namagunga: “It is discipline and hard work.” She says while it is difficult to gauge a student’s behaviour at the time of admission, it is always monitored as the student settles in the school environment.

“We expect students to adhere to the school rules. When you are disciplined, you are able to be focused and concentrate.”

She denies that they have the best teachers in school. “In fact, some schools even have better teachers, but the issue is how do you ensure you get the best out of what you have? We work collectively,” Sr. Paul says.

Mustafa Miwa, the director of studies at Nabisunsa Girls’ SS concurs but says many times the environment matters. In an era when schools are mushrooming just about anywhere, in an era when every storied building or shack is turned into a school; it is just as inevitable that the traditional schools perform a lot better.

“If you are to look at the top schools around, they are located in quiet places, free from noise and distraction,” says Miwa. “They have large compounds for co-curricular activities and enough facilities which makes it conducive both for students and teachers.”

Some schools, however, are accountable to the stakeholders; so they have no option but to work hard to ensure that there are enough facilities in place like laboratories and textbooks.

“Parents will not accept the school to go down when they are paying a lot of money in school fees. We always meet to devise ways to improve our standards. And I am always at the school,” says Dr. J.C. Muyingo, the head teacher of Uganda Martyrs Namugongo.

Others have managed to keep at the top because they always admit the best students. Muyingo, however, doesn’t agree.

“We normally take less than 10 students with Aggregate Four. The majority are in the last quarter of the first grade, but we still make it,” says Muyingo.

“The bottom line is that success is embedded in the school culture, whether it is in discipline or other activities; everybody does something with a goal to succeed,” he adds.

Even more, some teachers argue that when students join the schools, they involuntarily develop the confidence to excel.

“When a child joins Budo, they know at Budo, you do not fail. But his counterpart at a community school has no confidence in himself. He thinks he will not perform as well as the student in Budo,” a teacher remarks.

There are stories of children being drilled to pass, simply because the school must keep its name on top.

Some children have oftentimes been demoted to a lower class, or been referred to another school, simply because the school deemed their performance way below average.

Pascal Mukasa, a parent, talks of the time when his son was asked to choose between a demotion and moving to another school.

“The boy had not scored a 50% average. I think they feared he would not get a first grade,” Mukasa laments.

Nearly every parent’s dream school is to have his child in Budo, Gayaza or Kisubi. When 40-year-old Agnes Tibamanya’s daughter failed to make it to her dream school last year, she was distraught. “Gayaza was sort of a family school; my mother and my sisters had all studied there. I was disappointed,” Tibamanya says.

Tales abound how some parents bribe headteachers, or pay almost a double amount of fees, to have their children in a top school.

Educationists argue that it is wrong to assume that the child should take after everyone in the family.

“The child will still perform poorly, if he or she does not like the school,” says Prof. Senteza Kajubi, a senior educationist and vice-chancellor of Nkumba University.

Kajubi believes every school can become a Gayaza or a Kisubi in terms of performance if there is an extra effort. He says, it is the teachers who make the difference.

Emmanuel Sempala, the chairperson, training committee on the Wakiso Head teachers Association concurs and adds that children are actually better off in an “ordinary” school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher.

But this can only be possible if a school has enough infrastructure and classrooms are not overcrowded. This will allow the teachers to have a one-on-one with their children.

Unfortunately, Sempala observes, such an element is sometimes overlooked in many schools, and in the end, parents end up rushing to schools that already have the facilities.

“You can have the smallest classes in the world, good teachers, but if you do not work together, the children will not learn to the best of their capabilities and the school will never be seen as a top school.”