Government Utilizes Lockdown to Register Private Teachers

Government through the ministry of education has embarked on registering teachers from private schools and institutions for future planning for the sector.

According to Ismael Mulindwa, the director basic and secondary education in the ministry said they have been lacking data for teachers of private learning institutions which has been making it hard for it to plan for the sector accordingly.

Mulindwa says that under this arrangement the ministry of education with support from Global Partnership for education, KIX project will collect data of all teachers under the private schools, noting that now they can only be sure of data from the government learning institutions. He justifies that the ministry has been struggling to get statistics and other relevant information.

Mulindwa explains that the exercise will be managed at district level by the District Education Officers (DEO), working together with the inspectors of schools to help the school heads to fill an eclectic template which can only be submitted by the DEO.

However, Mulindwa clarifies that the registration should not be mistaken to be in preparation forCOVID-19 relief response.

This follows a misinterpretation from some teachers in Wakiso who thought the registration is intended to support the teachers with COVID-19 relief as a sector that has been affected hard.

Mulindwa calls for collaboration of the stakeholders into the exercise that started on July 5th and will be ending July 15th, 2021. This comes at a time when schools are being locked for the second time due to the fear of spreading COVID-19 among the school going population.

According to Mulindwa, it has always been hard for the government to come up with correct statistics of private school teachers whenever it is required in planning, like for the vaccination process, trainings, number of teachers in subject line among other issues.

Mulindwa says this will also help in following up on the teachers from the private institutions of learning that might opt not to come back after the lockdown.

Meanwhile the District Education Officer (DEO), Wakiso district Fredrick Kiyinji Kinobe says the process is too slow. He explains that the teachers were interpreting the registration to be targeting them for support which he said affected the process when they learnt that the intention was just to provide data.

‘’I think we shall need to ask for an extension of the deadline from the July 15 2021 due to the delays being caused by  excuses like lack of access to internet and other issues that affect the submissions,’’ says Kiyinji.

URN