The Minister for Education and Sports, Janet Museveni has decried the funding challenges the Ministry is grappling with in conducting the required inspection and supervision of schools in order to check the problem of teacher absenteeism.
Mrs Museveni who doubles as First Lady said this on Monday while briefing the press on the progress the Ministry of Education has made in implementing the set out guidelines for the sector by President Yoweri Museveni in his 2016 Manifesto.
Among the Presidential guidelines was the need to enhance the inspection of schools which was premised on the failure by pupils to be taught yet government was spending billions of money in the Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Secondary Education (USE) programs.
At the time, Museveni was concerned that despite the Shs 68 billion and Shs 129 billion that was being spent on UPE and USE respectively every year, the children of the poor were not being taught due to teacher absenteeism yet those in private schools where teachers earn less pay were being taught more.
“The President said there was a problem of absenteeism from schools by teachers which he said must stop. He said this problem is due to poor inspection as school inspectors do not do their work,” the Minister told journalists at the Uganda Media Centre.
But two years into the implementation of the manifesto, Mrs Janet Museveni says that inspection of these schools remains a challenge.
“We have low levels of funding in inspection and this is a big challenge. Absenteeism has been going on because inspection is not done properly, but we have found a challenge to do thorough inspection because of funding,” she said.
According to Dr Kedrace Turyagenda, the Director for Education Standards in the Ministry of Education, the Ministry requires a budget of Shs 14 billion annually to carry out sufficient inspection on schools but only Shs 4.5 billion is provided. This represents only 32% of what is required.
“Our commitment is to have atleast each Primary School inspected once every term by the Local government, then the Post Primary institutions to be inspected once a year by the Directorate of Education Standards,” Dr Kedrace Turyagenda said.
“If all that was to be done, we would need Shs 14 billion at the moment government sends Shs 2.5 billion to the local government and the Directorate gets Shs 2 billion,” she added.
She said that their proposals have been presented to Cabinet and they are optimistic that they will be considered. The Ministry is currently operating at a Shs 2.5 trillion budget which is a norminal increase from what it was in the 2016/17 financial year.
Meanwhile, the Ministry has also come up with Teacher Supervision Tools to be used by headteachers for inspection.
Some other officials in the Ministry who spoke to SoftPower News lamented about the difficulties they have encountered in explaining the importance of school inspection and its budget to the Ministry of Finance which appropriates the funds.
They say that the technocrats in the Ministry of Finance consider the budget for school inspection as wasteful expenditure given that it consists of travelling and related allowances. Even when the Ministry of Education makes attempts to channel other funds to this item, the budget is still scrapped by Finance as consumption.
Year on year, Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) has cited teacher absenteeism among the causes of poor academic performance by pupils and students at Primary and Secondary levels respectively.