Special needs school staff earn Shs50,000 a month

Teachers at Nancy Comprehensive Secondary School for the Deaf in Lira City are paid only Shs50,000 per month, Daily Monitor has learnt.

Mr Bonny George Okello, the head teacher, blames the issue on the school’s lack of funds.

“One of the biggest challenges we are facing is the payment of staff. Our staff are volunteers but they need to be motivated,” he says, adding that this has affected the quality of teaching and learning at the institution.

Mr Okello says the money is contributed by the parents.

“When parents make a little payment of Shs50,000 per child through Parents Teachers Association (PTA) fee at the end of the month, we give the teachers what we term as transport refund and each of them gets Shs50,000,” he says.

He adds that in a bid to address the issue, they plan to start making timetables which require teachers to come to school only twice a week. 

“So, that the rest of the other three days of the week they are able to look for survival somewhere else. That is the method we are using to sustain them,” he adds.

The head teacher says the staff are, however, hopeful that when the government takes over management of the school, they will be included on the government payroll.

“We were in partnership with the government in the implementation of Universal Secondary Education and we were receiving that grant. But the policy came whereby the government terminated the partnership with private schools,” he says.

“In the implementation, we were affected. But recently we applied to be reinstated and we are waiting for the response.” 

While officiating as the chief guest during the delivery of solar panels to the school on July 12, the Minister of Health, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, said the government through the Education ministry is planning to code (take over) the school.

The solar panels were donated by the family of  the founder of the school, an American only identified as Nancy.

Dr Aceng, who is the Lira City Woman Member of Parliament, said the coding of the school would be done in the financial year 2023/2024, adding that this is aimed at creating a favourable learning environment for the learners.

 “Sometime last year, personally, I wrote to the First Lady and she responded with a very beautiful letter. She said ‘Jane, I will send people to access the school’. She did and people came here to access the school,” Dr Aceng said. 

She added that once the school is taken over by the government, the issue of financial constraints will be addressed.

Mr Mathew Omara, a board member of the school and chairperson of persons with disabilities in Lira, says the government should also recruit more teachers at Nancy School for the Deaf to improve the education standard at the school.

About the school

Nancy Comprehensive Secondary School for the Deaf was established in 2004 by an American national only identified as Nancy with support from the community as a learning centre for children with special needs during the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency in northern Uganda.

It has primary, secondary and vocational sections.

The majority of the learners at the school (nearly 95 percent) have hearing impairments and the rest have other disabilities.

The school has an enrolment of 579 learners in secondary, primary and vocation sections and 63 teachers.