Pader school paying staff using offertory

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Mr Richard Amone, the school teacher, told Monitor at the weekend that they are struggling to render quality learning.

“If it is coded, we would have a minimum of eight teachers deployed by the government, but right now, we only have five,” he says.
In 2013, this publication established that the community of Dagodwong Village started a community school to save their children from trekking long distances to the nearest primary schools.
However, since then, the school has operated with a maximum capacity of five teachers who teach from Primary One to Primary Seven classes.
Mr Amone says besides the limited number of teachers, the school’s Parents and Teachers’ Association (PTA)’s is struggling to raise funds to hire and pay staff. He says the few teachers are paid using money generated from the Church offertories.

“What PTA raises is limited to adequately paying the staff due to the largely poor condition of the community around here. Many times, we supplement this using offertory generated by Christians during Sunday services,” Mr Amone, who is also the church’s catechist, says.
“The hope is that one day, the school will grow bigger and become self-reliant so that the money collected during Church services supports more school activities,” he adds.
Mr Kennedy Odong, the Probation Officer of Pader District, acknowledges that Pader has continued to perform poorly in the past five years due to poor staff retention in primary schools and a lack of learning facilities to retain learners.
“Pader is doing very badly in terms of access to education, retention of children in schools and the quality of education. Poverty and poor infrastructure are greatly contributing to the failure of our pupils to achieve at school,” he says.
“Learners in most parts of the district still have problems in reading and writing. The children cannot pronounce and when these challenges are there, you cannot expect any good performance from the children,” Mr Odong adds.
Last week, the district authorities and World Vision Uganda convened at the school to hand over a Shs214 million building constructed by World Vision Uganda to help the school to provide its learners with a standard learning environment.
 
Purpose
Mr Jeremiah Nyagah, the World Vision Uganda programme director, says the classroom block was the organisation’s efforts to revitalise the education sector in the district.
“Knowing that the investment in Dagodwong PS will improve the quality of education tremendously, our ultimate goal is to increase the number of primary school children who can read and write and that is why this intervention becomes very pivotal to Pader,” he says.
He further explains that “we learnt that pupils at Dagodwong attended lessons under dilapidated makeshifts and this learning environment greatly contributed to absenteeism where during the rainy season, or when it is very hot, lessons are interrupted as learners and teachers seek shelter from the harsh weather conditions”.
The Pader Education Strengthening Project (PESP), a Shs670Million project run by World Vision Uganda in partnership with Sanlam Foundation Trust, encompasses major school upgrades, provision of teacher’s instructional and learner’s reading materials aims to benefit three primary schools that were in dire need.

“Pader District was the epicentre of a more than 19-year protracted Lord’s Resistance Army conflict which devastated social infrastructure and services. The district performance in numeracy and literacy is still very low,” Mr Nyagah said.
“We believe it is possible to have effective and conducive learning environments, but this cannot happen without upgrading the learners’ facilities. Critically, learning facilities must be inclusive for learners with a disability, they must be safe and resilient to weather shocks,” he adds.
Mr Milton Odongo, the Pader Resident District Commissioner, applauded the development partners for investing more resources to revamp the deplorable state of primary schools in the district.
“My request to you is that you give us more blocks so that we have from P1 to P7 and we don’t lose our pupils. If the new block accommodates P1 and P2 only, that means we shall have serious challenges to retrain children in the upper classes,” Mr Odongo says.
 
Inspection
He also reveals that he had received notification from the Chief Administrative Officer’s desk of the arrival of officials from the Education ministry to assess more than 16 community primary schools to be supported by the government.
“The government will take over this school and code it, officials from the Ministry of Education are moving throughout the district to check on the community schools,” he says.
In 2013, upon opening to learners, the school registered 41 pupils from Primary One to Primary Three.
In 2014, it registered 63 pupils when it included Primary Four and Five. However, it recorded 103 pupils and 240 in 2015 and 2016 respectively when it expanded to Primary Seven.
The school had an enrollment of 358 learners as of last week.

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   Mr Dalmas Ochan, an executive member of the Parents and Teachers’ Association, says the two-unit classroom block has been designated to cater for P1 and P2 classes with the rest of the classes continuing to use the makeshift structures.
     He says the school is still understaffed.
   “In the new block, the office 
space,  classroom blocks, and desks have already been provided by World Vision, but the furniture for the office is lacking, which means we now have to go to the communities and collect more money,” Mr Ochan says.
   “The learners in the upper classes will continue to sit on logs while learning, this discourages many pupils from attending school here, especially the girls,” he adds.