Richmond Okia of St Peter’s CoU Nursery School in Wakiso District plays at his school. Education experts say children who miss pre-school are inherently disadvantaged in the race to acquire knowledge. PHOTO/RICHARDS ADDE
Sseddungu is 14 years old and a P5 pupil at a school in Mukono. Unlike many of his Kampala and Wakiso counterparts, he can barely express himself in English, the language of instruction at his school.
Instead, he prefers to communicate in Luganda, his mother tongue. And even then, he can barely maintain eye contact while speaking, typical of one with little self-confidence.
By contrast, Ssemwanga is 11 years old and also in P5, at Buganda Road Primary School in Kampala. He is fluent in both Luganda and English, with bags of confidence to go along. What unites the two children is that they are the sons of food vendors in their different localities. The stark difference between them is that Ssemwanga attended a nursery school in Bwaise before he started his P1. For Sseddungu, school started in P1 and it has been a struggle to catch up with his peers since.
“I could not afford to pay for nursery school for him,” Namukasa, his mother, says. “It was too expensive.”
Mukisa Junior School, the nursery school near Sseddungu’s home, charges each pupil Shs250,000 in tuition fees per term. This is more than Sseddungu’s primary school charges in tuition fees at Shs80,000 per head per term.
“It made sense for me to send him straight to P1,” Namukasa explains.
“So I used to go to work in the market with him until he was old enough to join P1.”
However, Namukasa, who dropped out of school in Senior Three to have a child, is not yet sure how far behind Sseddungu’s not joining preschool education has set him back. None of his three siblings will join nursery school.
“It is for the children of the rich ... and besides, they go [to preschool] just to play and return home,” she says. “Not being able to speak English is not the end of the world.”
But Ssemwanga and Sseddungu’s teachers and many in the education sector disagree. They believe preschool is essential for one’s learning process. Take Anita Kyomugasho, who has taught P1 and P2 at City Parents’ School in Kampala for the last 10 years. She has seen children who have missed out on preschool for years.
Kyomugasho says many parents are taken by images of children playing, singing and taking a nap in the afternoon to conclude that this is all that happens in pre-primary or preschool.
“How do you think these children learn to speak up, write and appreciate what is going on around them?” Kyomugasho asks.
She adds: “They learn about themselves and their surroundings. By the time they join P1, they are ready to appreciate more contemporary information.”
More alarming is a study by the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (Iser), which found that there is a correlation between poor academic performance and the lack of a pre-primary education.
The study quotes a Uganda National Examinations Board survey that looked at the numeracy and literacy of learners in P3 and P6. The survey found that learners who had attended nursery school performed better than those who did not attend nursery.”
Moreover, Medadi Ssentanda, a lecturer at Makerere University’s College of Education and External Studies, says rural-based learners like Sseddungu are inherently disadvantaged in the race to acquire knowledge.
“Bridging the two-year gap [in pre-school] of their counterparts in private schools is very challenging and in many cases impossible...The elective pre-school provision is currently creating a huge gap between learners within a single education system,” he notes.
Iser conducted a study in Kampala, Mukono, Namayingo and Omoro districts between July 2022 and January 2024 to determine this divide. The study found that many low-income parents were dissuaded from sending their children to pre-school due to the high tuition costs. However, the study found that many parents were keen on the benefits of preschool and wanted the government to invest in this level of learning.
Makerere University Child Centre in Kampala is the country’s only nursery school supported by the government. And even this happened accidentally as it was initially started to teach the children of Makerere University staff. Later, the government took it up.
Dr Safeldin Munir, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) country director, is calling for increased government support for preschool learning for children across the country.
Unicef has done studies into the benefits of investing in preschool and is convinced that Uganda stands to see the quality of people improve tenfold in 10 years if the government spends 15 percent of its GDP in pre-primary education.
Dr Jumah Nyende, the Iser Board chairperson, agrees.
“Preschool has the ability to boost their learning abilities for life, but is often overlooked,” he says.
He believes many parents ignore the benefits of pre-schooling as a way of avoiding the higher cost of nursery school tuition, not realising how important it can be in the long run.
Education ministry on the spot
In 2017, while presiding over the annual sector review, Education Minister Janet Museveni pledged the government’s commitment to establish an extra classroom at every UPE primary school in the country to cater for preschool learning. That task is yet to be taken up.
Asked about this, the ministry, which is yet to establish sufficient primary schools across the country, pleaded for time to marshall funds to make pre-school learning a possibility in government schools.
Ismail Mulindwa, the director of Basic Education, says the government is committed to improving Early Childhood Education, but it is looking to initially tie in the policy requirements.
“We are looking at all nursery schools to be properly registered and regulated,” he says. “We want all caregivers (the term given for nursery schoolteachers) to be trained and certified.”
However, here too, the government has come short in creating an enabling environment. Apart from establishing nursery schools, caregivers are also trained in privately-owned institutions.
Only recently have state universities like Makerere and Kyambogo started to pay more attention to training experts in early childhood learning.
Iser’s executive director Angella Nabwowe Kasule believes the government should stop paying lip service and invest more to this critical sub-sector or learning.
“Everything has a foundation and pre-school is the foundation for learning,” she says.
Kasule is convinced that an investment in this area will yield substantial returns to the country.
