Lango limping seed schools close door to newcomers

Seed secondary schools in Lango Sub-region are struggling to operate due to a number of challenges, including inadequate space, which has forced some to stop admission of learners.
Abok Seed Secondary School in Abok Sub-county, Oyam District, which was constructed to accommodate 450 students, now has 520 students.
The school started as a community school to support the education of Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) attack survivors in 2017. However, today the school administration has closed the door to newcomers because of lack of space. Other challenges that the seed secondary schools are faced with include inadequate personnel and classrooms as well as lack of transport means to take students for academic and co-curricular activities.
A survey by Daily Monitor, conducted in three seed secondary schools in Oyam, Amolatar and Alebtong districts last week showed that the government schools commissioned last year, use solar or generators since they are not connected to the national power grid.
Abia Seed Secondary School in Abia Sub-county,Alebtong District, also lacks transport means to take learners for academic activities. As a result, students are transported using teachers’ motorcycles, which is risky.
Mr Levi Abongo, the head teacher of Abia Seed Secondary School, said: “We are fueling teachers’ motorcycles and requesting them to ferry students to and fro during academic activities because the government did not provide the schools with any means of transport for activities that require students to go out of school.”
Last Friday, Mr Abongo said some of their students trekked several kilometres on foot to participate in a debate competition organised by Uganda National Students Association (UNSA) secretariat at Alebtong District headquarters.
He appealed to the government to give special attention to the school which was once an internally displaced people’s (IDP) camp.
“A school like this should have some modest means of transport where when our children are being taken for academic programmes and activities, they are safe,” Mr Abongo said.
Abia Seed Secondary School, which was commissioned in March 2022, has 218 learners from the neighbouring districts of Lira, Kole, Otuke, Agago, Pader and Alebtong.
Mr Abongo also said some subjects are not being taught due to the staffing gap. The school, which is supposed to have 32 teachers, only has 14.
“We still have a staffing gap of 18 and many times we have written to the chief administrative officer of Alebtong and also the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education and Sports and the commissioner for secondary education to fill the missing gaps,” Mr Abongo said.
He said some parents also still have negative attitudes towards the education of their children and do not provide them with scholastic materials and meals.
“For the case of girls, some of their parents don’t even give them sanitary pads. This makes these girls, especially the ones who are commuting from home, to absent themselves because there is no way they can control themselves and come to school,” the head teacher said.
Situation in other schools
The situation at Abok Seed Secondary School in Abok Sub-county, Oyam District, isn’t any different. At its inception in 2017, the school had 19 students and nine volunteer teachers before it was taken over by the government in 2019.
Today, the school’s total enrolment is 520 students, who are being taught by 28 teachers.
“In terms of results, our results have been promising and every year we have been registering improvements. And as a result, the number of children is increasing every day and as I speak now, we have stopped admission. We cannot just admit when we have no space,” Mr Patrick Gira, the head teacher, said.
Mr Gira appealed to the government to put up more structures to accommodate more students.
The school recently received science laboratory equipment worth Shs15 million from schools and colleges of the United Kingdom (UK) through the Lab Aid Foundation Uganda.
“This is a school that is very lucky. We have all the teachers for all the subjects and they are working diligently to ensure that the children get quality education and we have the best laboratories among the seed schools in the country,” Mr Gira said.
However, Abok Seed Secondary School lacks electricity and depends on solar power to run its operations.
Mr Geoffrey Ogangi, the head teacher of Muntu Seed Secondary School in Amolatar District, said challenges affecting seed schools cut across.
 Muntu Seed Secondary School was started in 2016 as a community school with a total of 34 students and a group of nine volunteer teachers.
The school was taken over by the government in 2018 and construction of more structures started in 2019. 
 “We have 689 students as per the enrolment now – from Senior One to Senior Four. We have also opened A-Level this year and we have 35 students and most of them are doing science combinations,” Mr Ogangi said.
He said parents constructed two dormitories for male and female students but the structures are not enough and some students use the classrooms for accommodation.
“Our main challenge is the power to run the computers.  Although we have a generator, at times it is a little bit expensive,” he said. Mr Ogangi also cited lack of fencing, which leads to disruption of school activities.
Background
The government through the Ministry of Education and Sports is implementing the Inter-Governmental, Fiscal Transfers (UgIFT) programme. 
The programme is financed by the World Bank loan with the aim of making education accessible to learners in the rural communities.
The government plans to construct 259 seed secondary schools as part of its efforts to ensure that all sub-counties across the country have a seed school.  A total of 117 schools will be built in the first phase, 115 schools in the second, and 27 in the third one.
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