20

MWALIMU

NEW VISION, Wednesday, July 9, 2014

17 years later, is free

primary education getting
off the rails? New Vision,
for the next two days
will be running a series,
following the status
of Universal Primary
Education in the country.
What are its great strides
and hitches and what is
the way forward? Conan
Businge, Stephen
Ssenkaaba,
Jonathan
Angura, Angel
Musinguzi &
Caroline Ariba
investigated.

Some
classes
at Aputiputi are
held
under
trees

Mangoes for lunch,

A day in the life of a rural UPE pupil
By Caroline Ariba

Carol
Amoding

It takes bravery to cut through the thorny

bushes and evade the mini-floods covering
the only path meandering into Aputi-puti
Primary School in Bukedea district.
As our motorcycle goes through the
thicket, a line of barefooted children, clad
in old green uniforms, comb through the
same bush and spring to view.
Suddenly, the sound of a loud gong
peals through the village as we arrive at the
school compound. The pupils dash to the
schools daily morning assembly and slowly
settle into silence. Away from the assembly,
a movement through the high bushes catches
my eye.
Twenty minutes after the 8:00am gong, a little
girl, probably 12 years old, books in one hand,
a half-eaten mango in the other, runs into the
school. Carol Amoding is late.
Midway in her sprint, the skirt of Amodings
green dress trips her. She stops to loosen the
knot on the hem of her stained uniform that is
impeding her movement, inspects her bare feet
and plucks out what seems to be a tiny thorn.
She spits in her palms, rubs her hands together
and smears her pale arms and legs and then
dashes to catch up with the rest, who are already
breaking up from the assembly to get into their
classes.
She dashes to her classroom. The morning
session goes on well, with no big hustle, apart
from the teacher who arrives a few minutes late
for her class; like it happens in a number of
other public schools.
The head teacher, Annette Igunyo says some
of her teachers come late, much as she forbids
it, there is not much she can do. At this point
you are glad at least he has arrived, even though
he is dripping wet with rain or sweat, she says.
After break, one of the teachers, misses a
lesson. She did not communicate to the head

7,500

Government
allocates
sh7,500 per
child under
UPE for each
academic
year
Aputi-puti Primary School pupils sitting on the floor during a lesson
teacher, concerning her absence.
This is common in rural UPE schools. Several
studies show that at least one teacher misses on
any given public school day.
Unlike in the past where school inspectors
would monitor and penalise absconding
teachers, this is no longer the case. The 2012
Judicial Commission of Inquiry in UPE and
USE found out that the capacity of the systems
to inspect schools is poor, with structural and
logistical bottlenecks.
Since there is no teacher in class, Amodings
classmates resort to playing and making noise
the minute their head teacher disappears.
Amoding is seated on the floor since there are
not enough desks in the classroom.
A few of the pupils are lucky to sit at desks in
this school. The children in the higher classes

study under the mango tree, since there are

only six classroom blocks.
When I joined this school, we were very
many in class and at that time there was
not even one desk in this school, Amoding
narrates. The higher she gets, the more
spacious the class gets since there are fewer
pupils in class. When you go to P5, because
many children repeat P4, then there is more
space, she says.
This is despite the Governments automatic
promotion policy under UPE. As a result of
pupils repeating classes, the country loses
sh53b annually.
Amoding, who has never repeated a class,
hums while occasionally digging into her
raw mango. Before long, the gong sounds,
releasing them to go for lunch.

MWALIMU

NEW VISION, Wednesday, July 9, 2014

21

Assessment

A dream turned sour?

Almost 17 years ago, a much-needed
universal education programme (UPE)
started in Uganda.
Parents who had lost hope of ever
sending their children to school were
relieved of the burden of paying school
fees, and excitedly started sending
their children to school by the millions.
Although the numbers have been
attained, low quality education,
meagre budgets, suspicions of
corruption, and questionable policies
have largely eroded any gains.
Aputi-puti Primary School in Bukedea
district is just one of the public
primary schools in the country whose
administrators are pressed to provide
an education for the children with a
constant lack of scholastic materials,
inadequate school infrastructure,
on their own and an inspection and
monitoring system that has collapsed.
Pupils
Aputi-puti pupil, Carol Amoding
eat
and
millions of others now face a
mangoes
myriad of difficulties: congestion in
as they
the classrooms without furniture and
walk
stationery, teachers who are often
back to
absent because they are trying to
school
make ends meet, impacting their
during
learning.
lunch
break

Above, as afternoon classes progress, the pupils start to

doze off. Below, the hut Amoding shares with her mother

mango trees for classrooms

LUNCH TIME
Lunch time at Aputi-puti is an every-man-forhimself-and-God-for-us-all affair. Despite the
constant reminder to parents to pack lunch
for their children, very few in this community
school do so.
Amoding is one of those who are unable to
carry lunch to school. When the gong sounds,
she speeds out of the school through a tiny path
to her home, hoping to get lunch. A kilometre
later, she branches into a tiny compound, with
two grass thatched huts, one incomplete. She
halts abruptly, looking painfully at a woman
in the compound sorting through a handful of
green vegetables which she plans to prepare for
soup to accompany the food she is still cooking.
Nothing said, Amoding rushes to the tiny
compounds mango tree and plucks a mango
then runs back to school.
My child did not have food yesterday. This
morning she got the mango that was in the
house for her breakfast, and now I have failed
to find food on time, because I had to first work
in peoples gardens to raise money for books,
Amodings mother confesses.
When we harvest crops in the village, we are
asked to take at least three handfuls of beans
and about nine handfuls of maize grains for
the whole term to feed our children at school,
she explains in Ateso. But there hasnt been a
harvest this season, and even if there was, this
mother says that her sons need about sh42,000
each to stay in the only Government-aided
secondary school in the community.
Amoding says that some of her friends do
not want to continue with schooling because
on top of suffering with hunger every day for
seven years, they may not pass the national
examinations, or find money to join the good
private schools.
Most of our schoolmates who join Government
schools under Universal Secondary Education
fail national examinations. This makes me feel
like I should give up. It is the same reason why
some easily give in to men and teachers, get
pregnant and leave school, Amoding explains.
Of every 10 pupils who join P1 in Ugandas

Amoding partly blames the failure of pupils in

her school on the lack of scholastic materials.
I have to write in a very small handwriting so
that I can use one book for a long time. It is very
difficult, she confesses. But even if I want to
read, it is hard because we only have paraffin
maybe once a week for light, she adds.
Recently, Amoding says she started her
menstrual periods and she had to sit under a
mango tree, until darkness fell, because her
dress had been soiled. At her school, teachers,
boys and girls; all share the same toilet stances.
Whenever Im in my periods, I never go to
school, she says.
It is hard for these pupils to concentrate
and they sometimes end up staying in primary
school for over 10 years, repeating probably
every class, Igunyo says.

Recently,Amoding started
her menstrual periods
and she had to sit under
a mango tree, until
darkness fell, because her
dress had been soiled
primary schools, only about three make it to P7.
But of the three, it is always one girl or at times
none of the girls reaching P7, yet there are more
girls than boys who join P1.
Back in class after lunch, the pupils drag their
bare feet, raise their hands lazily and will do
anything for a nap. Those at the back of the
classroom are dozing.
A good number of the little pupils in this class
wear tear-stained faces and dry lips, since they
did not have lunch.
Amodings after-lunch class delays because of
inadequate chalk. Indeed, it is not only chalk
that is insufficient in this school. Children are
subjected to old blackboards, limited number of
charts and some teachers do not have enough
aid books to use in classroom teaching.
How do you expect us to prepare our
schemes of work and plan for teaching, if we
can hardly even get exercise books at times,
laments one of the teachers. The inadequate
scholastic materials partly stems from delayed
capitation grants from Government. Even when
it is sent, it is still inadequate, according to the
school authorities, since each child is allocated
sh7,500 for a full academic year of three terms.
Igunyo is almost speechless when discussing
the impact of the delay of the capitation monies.
Government officials are telling us that the
money will be released in August. We have to
run the school on borrowed monies. At times,
I have to use my own money to run some of

end of school day

Amodings first proper meal in two days

the school activities! she laments. Mark you,
I do not earn a head teachers salary. I earn a
class room teachers salary, about sh300,000.
Now tell me, because I have my own children to
educate and to feed? says a frustrated Igunyo.
Not a single building in the school was put
up by the Government until recently when a
NUSAF staff built two unit structures for the
school. We have six classrooms and seven
classes. P7 pupils have to sit under the tree
shade to study since the classes are few. When
it is raining, they share a class with P6 pupils,
she says. Lower classes enrolments are high, but
can never be broken down into streams due to
inadequate space.
The pupils can hardly get books, pens and
pencils from their parents. A good number of
Amodings friends are not in school uniform,
since their parents say they cannot afford all
these scholastic materials.

I spot Amoding running off at about 4:00pm,

and follow her home. This time round, it is a
different story. Her mother has some posho,
boiled greens, without tomatoes or onions
anyway and she can hardly get cooking oil.
It is not a balanced diet too, not that she does
not understand what it means, but because
her hands are tied and she prefers to call it, a
luxury.
This is the first meal Im eating since morning.
We did not have food except mangoes, she
explains in a soft voice.
In the tiny hut that she shares with her mother,
is a mat, with an old bed-sheet atop it. Sun rays
stream through the sparsely thatched hut. There
is no way mosquitos can spare them and if it
rains they must get wet. So from a night of no
sleep, comes a day of no food and stressful
schooling but Amoding is determined to carry
on and perhaps one day become the teacher she
hopes to be.

IN TOMORROWS PAPER
Unveiling the life of teachers under UPE