Prime
Is the quality of teachers to blame for student poor performance?
A Primary One pupil at Madrasa Resource Centre teaches others how to spell words as a teacher looks on.
What you need to know:
The government sets the lowest cut off points for primary teachers’ training and allows the best students to go to high school.
Who recruits teachers, where, how and who trains them and what quality of education are they able to pass on to the learners they teach? Recent debate about the pitiable performance of learners, especially in the public school system, now implementing universal education in primary and secondary schools has turned the spotlight on teachers.
Reports on the poor performance have focused on absenteeism as a major cause for poor performance and the teachers through their union blame it on lack of motivation and adequate facilities but no study has paid specific attention to the abilities and quality of teachers and the system that produces them.
But a Daily Monitor analysis of official data by the Ministry of Education indicates that unlike in the past particularly in the 1970s, when the finest brains mandatorily trained as teachers, the profession today has been invaded by individuals who embrace it as a last resort after failing to secure necessary grades to progress to the next academic level.
Ironically, government blames itself for setting the lowest cut-off points for admission into a Primary Teachers’ Training (PTCs) institution while allowing the best students to proceed to high school.
The practice is often repeated at Senior Six where students join National Teacher Training Colleges. For example, Sancta Maria PTC admitted students with aggregate 53, Soroti PTC got students with aggregate 52, while Busubizi PTC’s cut off of 51 was the best.
Cut-off points
The cut-off points for girls at Kitgum PTC was aggregate 55 in the best eight subjects compared to the boys who needed aggregate 50. Kapchorwa and John Bosco Nyonde,49, Kibuli,47, Kiyoora, Kaliro and Buhungiro,45, Kisoro,47, Shimoni Core PTC had Aggregate 46, Kabale,43, Kamurasi and Bwera,48 and Bushenyi,41.
During Senior Five selection in May, the government gave the best students in division one to schools like Budo, Gayaza, Nabisunsa Girls and Ntare, Maryhill, among others while others competed for numerous private schools.
Some also now go through the same selection process as government aided schools. The Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) grading system for O-Level puts division one performance at aggregate 32, division two at 45 and 58 for division 3. Candidates in divisions one to four qualify for Uganda Certificate of Education certificates.
Dr Robinah Kyeyune of Makerere University, says children do not learn not because teachers are not teaching but they do not know how to teach them. “In PTCs they only teach what reading is not how to read. These are people we have entrusted with our children. A teacher graduates without knowledge of the curriculum. What are they going to teach? They cannot be models of the children they teach,” she says.
The students once admitted at PTCs have two years to train before they can join the world of work but Kitgum PTC’s principal Simon Charles Okuni says if students have been of low quality, it is difficult for the institution to get the best out of them.
“The challenge comes from selection. We receive computer lists already worked on by Ministry of Education and most of the time they give us those with passes (a pass is the thin line between complete failure and extreme poor performance) of subjects taught in primary,” he said, adding: “When we get P8 and P7, its an uphill task to make such a person develop proficiency in teaching primary school learners. It becomes a problem for this teacher to train a pupil because they have not mastered the concepts,” Mr Okuni said.
There have been concerns about teachers’ low remuneration and their declining social status, contrasting their privileged and high esteem in the past which has forced bright students to shun the profession, observers say.
Salary scales
A primary teacher takes home Shs273,000 a month before tax while their counterparts in secondary school earn between Shs300,000 and Shs500,000 depending on the qualification.
Besides admitting poor academic performers, Mr Okuni says his college, which lacks instructional materials, has four classrooms for 400 students, lacks tutors and wonders how the public can expect a well-trained teacher from an ill-equipped institution. “We are supposed to have 22 tutors but we have nine and this creates a big gap in covering the curriculum.
There are no textbooks to handle certain components of the curriculum and this is not an isolated case. It cuts across all colleges,” Mr Okuni, says. The principal also says his students are from displaced camps and those who have gone through Universal Primary Education schools.
In 1963, Uganda Education Commission led by Prof Edgar Castle asked: “When over half the population is illiterate and the people rightly clamour for education, when teachers are in short supply and inadequately trained, when the government and industry demand trained recruits, when unemployment is widespread and increasing, when the nation is poor, what policy should the government pursue?”
The commission, set up three months after the country’s independence in 1962, stressed the need to place primary education not only on quantitative expansion but also on quality of education. However, because of political unrest, the recommendations were not implemented.
President Idi Amin Dada between 1978 and 1979 appointed Education Policy Review whose findings were also not published because the Liberation war toppled the nine-year regime in 1979.
Mr Amanya Mushega, the then minister of Education and Sports, appointed an education policy review commission chaired by Senteza Kajubi in 1987, under a new government of President Museveni.
The proposals were then published in the government’s white paper on Education Policy Review Commission report titled education for national integration and development 1992.
“While government took serious note of commission’s proposals, it could not accept and implement all. A balance had to be made between what was desirable and feasible in view of the financial and manpower resources of the country,” Prof Kajubi said. But what is remarkable today is the introduction of UPE in 1997 which has seen the number of pupils who enroll to primary education rise from 3,068,625 in 1996, a year before the scheme to 8,324,615 pupils today.
However, how much have Castles’ questions been answered 48 years later?
A Daily Monitor survey indicates that majority of pupils who enroll to primary have not been able to complete the cycle in the last decade with about 70 per cent drop-out rate, a fact that raises rather uncomfortable questions about the real value of UPE.
This year alone, Uneb reported that 535, 933 pupils registered for Primary Leaving Examinations, but it is 1,176,487 pupils less of those who joined Primary One in 2005 reflecting a 69 per cent dropout rate. Earlier, the ministry showed that 1,704,766 pupils joined school in 2001 only to register 470,272 candidates seven years later for the national examinations.
A similar incident was reported in 2002 with at least 1,847,180 pupils entering Primary One but with 72 per cent drop-out rate in 2008 when they were expected to complete their primary education.
Pupils who sat for their PLE in 2009 were 1,405,253 less of the 1,914,893 who registered in P1 (2003). While 490,513 appeared for the 2010 PLE exams, the ministry had registered 544,531 pupils during its school census in the same period, a drop from what government recorded in 2004 (1,837,277) pupils in P1.
Although UNEB has in the past five years reported an increasing number of P7 candidates who register with them, their figure is much less than the pupils who first enrolled on the programme in Primary One.
This means that more than half the number of pupils who join primary leave before completing the cycle. Ministry officials though could not ascertain why 2009 had the largest drop-out compared to the rest of the years as illustrated in the graph. However, they urge that some children join school when they are still under age and are held back between classes.
Mr Daniel Nkaada, a commissioner for primary education, said the matter was “sensitive”.
“We can’t just say anything but the reasons are there in our abstract,” he said.
But Mr Aggrey Kibenge, the ministry’s undersecretary, attributed the challenge on local governments, saying the centre finds it difficult to ascertain the numbers since they have been endorsed by the district officials.
“It is the responsibility of local government to monitor and ensure they have correct figures. Even when they are making submissions, the head teachers state that they have 800 children knowing 100 are in pre-primary and the District Education Officer endorses them. That is where there has been confusion,” Mr Kibenge said. He said while some parents engage their children in domestic chores, other children leave for marriage and money.
However, he added that the common reason is that children, who are held back between classes, by either parents or schools want better grades. “Quite a number of these children are not necessarily dropping out of school but being held back in class which is of course illegal. Some children are enrolled in school when they are under age and when we are doing headcount, they are considered yet they are not supposed to,” Mr Kibenge said. But reports indicate that despite the government’s effort, more children are still illiterate.
While majority who enroll to primary do not complete the cycle, majority of those who make it to Primary Seven still have difficulties in literacy and numeracy skills. Netherlands ambassador Jeroen Verheul said in a joint statement by development partners: “Right now more than 40 per cent of the ever growing number of pupils at P3 level is illiterate. They and their fellows who dropped out of primary school stand very little chance of ever making it to any form of secondary education.”
