Prime
NRA/M must end education apartheid
Author: Joseph Ochieno.
What you need to know:
- This education-apartheid must stop. Education is the most important equaliser in society.
In my letter of Sunday, July 11, on these columns (Mahanga: A symptom of national malaise), I wrote of how Mahanga Primary School in Tororo District purposely-built within the first eight years of post-independence UPC government was able to produce the best pupil, nation-wide in PLE results in 1972.
I suggested, possibly boastfully, that this was despite neighbouring St Joseph’s Boys Primary being more prestigious and academically superior. What I omitted to mention was that Nagongera Girls – the boarding convent school next to us – was among the best schools in the greater Bukedi District then, (the best for girls), occasionally challenged by Kisoko Girls and Kamonkoli Girls. Nagongera Girls, which was the eastern-destination-of-choice for affluent parents from Buganda and western Uganda is a subject of a features’ attention for another day.
What I did not know four weeks ago though, was that I would return with an even more tearful letter; PLE results for 2021 were released just about a week later and the picture was dim, grim and close to criminal.
Thanks to political patronage, the former Nagongera Sub-country is now divided into three: Katajula Sub-country, Nagongera Sub-county and Nagongera Town Council which is the home of Nagongera Boys’, Mahanga and Nagongera Girls’ Primary Schools.
Kataluja Sub-county obtained zero in Division One. Nagongera Sub-county obtained zero in Division One. Except for Nagongera Girl’s School, Nagongera Town Council obtained one Division One, thanks to Rock Hill Primary School, my current polling station. Otherwise put, Nagongera Girls’ Convent-School (thanks to the fantastic work of Sister Leticia and team), obtained 35 Division One; a continued excellence and leading light in Tororo.
Since the release of the results, I have not heard any comments from the man who represents Nagongera in the National Assembly expressing regret, concern or certainly, asking the minister responsible for education, why these poor results. Nor have I heard anyone else raise these matters with the ministers, civil servants or teaching staff on behalf of the parents of Nagongera, Tororo or Bukedi sub-region.
That is what should happen in any average ‘democracy’. Ministers take responsibility for general and overall performance in their respective dockets while Parliament holds them to account. Other than press statements to the country, they must attend Parliament to explain themselves. We pay them both - very expensively - to do just that.
I know it is a rather-tall-ask of the local representative in Parliament. They are unlikely to seek answers in part because they do not know. Partly because they do not care. It is also possible – like one legislator admitted in a national television panel in which I was – that some of his colleagues ‘fear’ asking ‘difficult’ questions.
However, some do not because they want to please the masters-at-the-top; they do not wish to appear to be the ‘bad’ guys. Some of these guys actually do not care; their children attend private schools in Kampala and possibly excel.
But like I have variously suggested, some of these guys actually do not know what their roles are and are - pathetically therefore - unable to know how to execute them, Shs200 million notwithstanding.
How else would an MP, whose role it is to ensure government supplies and maintains an ambulance for a local health facility, instead ‘buy’ one; paint it in his or her colour and ‘donate’ it to the ‘electorate’? Such a wasted-space-of-a-citizen is likely to buy desks, paint them in their colours and stamp their names on it, instead. Asked to account, they will suggest that is the best way to ‘improve performance’ in the killed-rural-public schools.
This education-apartheid must stop. Education is the most important equaliser in society. I ask Mr Museveni to act quickly. Nagongera too, deserve Harvard graduates.
The writer is a pan-Africanist and former columnist with New African Magazine
