UPE fights on
Nov 16, 2003
DONORS and education stakeholders across the country last week converged in Kampala for the 10th Education Sector Review
By John Eremu
DONORS and education stakeholders across the country last week converged in Kampala for the 10th Education Sector Review. They took stock of the sector’s performance and in particular the seven-year old Universal Primary Education (UPE).
In August, President Yoweri Museveni the UPE architect, made wide ranging pronouncements and promised to jail whoever introduced extra charges in UPE schools including payment for meals.
The President’s outbursts were not out of the blue. It pointed to one of the major challenges the programme faces - the question of retention. A new study by the World Bank found out that monetary costs accounted for 55% of all drop outs despite UPE.
“Despite the UPE which abolishes school fees, pupils in public schools still spent on average sh27,000 a year to cover the costs of exercise books, pens, uniforms, top up for teachers and lunch fees,†said Harriet Nanyonjo, the Bank’s Education Specialist who presented the report at the review. The private schools spend sh128,000.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Education, the other reasons for drop out included lack of interest accounting for 43.1% of all the cases, family responsibility 14.6%, sickness 11.6%, jobs 4.6%, marriage 3.5%, pregnancy 2.1%, dismissal 0.7% while 12.7% left school for unknown reason.
While UPE was generally described as successful because enrolment rose from 2.5 million to 5.7 million children at its inception in 1997, to the current 7.3 million, the completion rate has been unacceptably low. Only 20% of the 2.1 million UPE cohort of 1997 have reached primary seven.
The Education Funding Agencies Group (EFAG) expressed worry that Uganda might not beat the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of Education For All (EFA) by 2015 unless the current high school dropout rate was arrested.
The donors said the yardstick for measuring the education MDG was the completion rate and not the enrolment rates.
“One of the MDGs is to ensure that by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. Low levels of primary school survival and completion rates will not only threaten the achievement of MDGs, but also endanger the acquisition of basic literacy and numeracy,†Nanyonjo said.
Parliament has also voiced concern that of the 2.1 million pupils that enrolled in primary one when Universal Primary Education (UPE) was introduced in 1997, only 406,000 had reached primary seven.
The donors said Uganda’s current completion rate of 46% is 54 percentage points short of the millennium goal. While pledging continued support, the donors asked Uganda to work harder towards achieving the goal by adopting appropriate policies at the national level and to mobilise both local and international financial and technical support.
Education Minister, Dr. Khiddu Makubuya acknowledge that retention was still a problem but that government will work together with the other stakeholders to bridge the gap by improving the school infrastructure.
However, UPE has made tremendous achievements in other parameters, achieving a 250% increase in enrolment between 1996 and 2003. The net enrolment ration now stands at about 90% as opposed to 60% before the programme was introduced.
The wealth bias that had characterised access prior to UPE has virtually been eliminated. The 20% poorest households now have as high enrolment as the 20% richest households - 84% and 85% respectively, according to the World Bank report.
Vivian Nantambi from Buloba Church of Uganda Primary School summarised it all: “It is better to have some education for all rather than all education for some.â€
UPE has also raised the Gross Intake Rate (GIR) in primary schools by 155% with those of girls going up by as much as 158%. The GIR is the number of new entrants in primary one as a percentage of the population of the official school entry age, which is six years.
The Net Intake Rate for boys went up by 55.9% while those for girls increased by 59.7% giving the average NIR of 57.8%. This scenario was best described by Josephine Nandungwa of St. Joseph’s primary school Masaka.
“For the first time in our school, there are more boys than girls. This means, before UPE very many girls were out of school,†she says.
The NIR is the percentage of new entrants into primary one as a percentage of the corresponding population.
Under UPE, over 84,000 classrooms have been built over the years. This has almost eliminated tree-shade schools.
“From tree-shade classroom, we now study in modern well-furnished classroom because of UPE,†Nantambi said.
The classroom construction programme under the School Facilities Grant (SFG) has reduced the pupil classroom ratio (PCR) from 94 in 1997 to 87. The target is to achieve the PCR of 1:55, the Pupil Desk ratio of 1:3, latrine - pupil ratio of 1:40 and at least four teachers houses per school in the medium term Budgetary Framework.
Government has also procured over seven million textbooks. The target is to achieve a pupil textbook ratio of 3:1 from the current 6:1.
The systematic recruitment of teachers has reduced the PTR from 1:110 in 1997 to 1:55 and plans are underway to take it down to 1:52 next year, if Dr. Khiddu Makubuya is to be believed.
DONORS and education stakeholders across the country last week converged in Kampala for the 10th Education Sector Review. They took stock of the sector’s performance and in particular the seven-year old Universal Primary Education (UPE).
In August, President Yoweri Museveni the UPE architect, made wide ranging pronouncements and promised to jail whoever introduced extra charges in UPE schools including payment for meals.
The President’s outbursts were not out of the blue. It pointed to one of the major challenges the programme faces - the question of retention. A new study by the World Bank found out that monetary costs accounted for 55% of all drop outs despite UPE.
“Despite the UPE which abolishes school fees, pupils in public schools still spent on average sh27,000 a year to cover the costs of exercise books, pens, uniforms, top up for teachers and lunch fees,†said Harriet Nanyonjo, the Bank’s Education Specialist who presented the report at the review. The private schools spend sh128,000.
According to statistics from the Ministry of Education, the other reasons for drop out included lack of interest accounting for 43.1% of all the cases, family responsibility 14.6%, sickness 11.6%, jobs 4.6%, marriage 3.5%, pregnancy 2.1%, dismissal 0.7% while 12.7% left school for unknown reason.
While UPE was generally described as successful because enrolment rose from 2.5 million to 5.7 million children at its inception in 1997, to the current 7.3 million, the completion rate has been unacceptably low. Only 20% of the 2.1 million UPE cohort of 1997 have reached primary seven.
The Education Funding Agencies Group (EFAG) expressed worry that Uganda might not beat the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of Education For All (EFA) by 2015 unless the current high school dropout rate was arrested.
The donors said the yardstick for measuring the education MDG was the completion rate and not the enrolment rates.
“One of the MDGs is to ensure that by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. Low levels of primary school survival and completion rates will not only threaten the achievement of MDGs, but also endanger the acquisition of basic literacy and numeracy,†Nanyonjo said.
Parliament has also voiced concern that of the 2.1 million pupils that enrolled in primary one when Universal Primary Education (UPE) was introduced in 1997, only 406,000 had reached primary seven.
The donors said Uganda’s current completion rate of 46% is 54 percentage points short of the millennium goal. While pledging continued support, the donors asked Uganda to work harder towards achieving the goal by adopting appropriate policies at the national level and to mobilise both local and international financial and technical support.
Education Minister, Dr. Khiddu Makubuya acknowledge that retention was still a problem but that government will work together with the other stakeholders to bridge the gap by improving the school infrastructure.
However, UPE has made tremendous achievements in other parameters, achieving a 250% increase in enrolment between 1996 and 2003. The net enrolment ration now stands at about 90% as opposed to 60% before the programme was introduced.
The wealth bias that had characterised access prior to UPE has virtually been eliminated. The 20% poorest households now have as high enrolment as the 20% richest households - 84% and 85% respectively, according to the World Bank report.
Vivian Nantambi from Buloba Church of Uganda Primary School summarised it all: “It is better to have some education for all rather than all education for some.â€
UPE has also raised the Gross Intake Rate (GIR) in primary schools by 155% with those of girls going up by as much as 158%. The GIR is the number of new entrants in primary one as a percentage of the population of the official school entry age, which is six years.
The Net Intake Rate for boys went up by 55.9% while those for girls increased by 59.7% giving the average NIR of 57.8%. This scenario was best described by Josephine Nandungwa of St. Joseph’s primary school Masaka.
“For the first time in our school, there are more boys than girls. This means, before UPE very many girls were out of school,†she says.
The NIR is the percentage of new entrants into primary one as a percentage of the corresponding population.
Under UPE, over 84,000 classrooms have been built over the years. This has almost eliminated tree-shade schools.
“From tree-shade classroom, we now study in modern well-furnished classroom because of UPE,†Nantambi said.
The classroom construction programme under the School Facilities Grant (SFG) has reduced the pupil classroom ratio (PCR) from 94 in 1997 to 87. The target is to achieve the PCR of 1:55, the Pupil Desk ratio of 1:3, latrine - pupil ratio of 1:40 and at least four teachers houses per school in the medium term Budgetary Framework.
Government has also procured over seven million textbooks. The target is to achieve a pupil textbook ratio of 3:1 from the current 6:1.
The systematic recruitment of teachers has reduced the PTR from 1:110 in 1997 to 1:55 and plans are underway to take it down to 1:52 next year, if Dr. Khiddu Makubuya is to be believed.