2011 PLE results expose learning gap between urban and rural schools

It is about 8am in Ibanda District and a 15-year-old boy, who is supposed to be at school, is busy grazing cattle. With him are two other boys, six and eight years of age, all holding sticks which they use to drive their cattle out of the road as cars pass by.

Away in Ntoroko District around the same time, a 10-year-old boy is seated by the lakeside, waiting to draw out fishnets from the lake while others wash the nets after the night’s catch.

The story is not different in Kyegegwa, where a young girl is seen either carrying a hoe on her way to the garden or another is strolling her way down to the market with a basket of tomatoes.

All of these children are enrolled in various primary schools around the districts. However, on these particular days, these youngsters had absconded from studies because, according to them, they have “to help at home”.

This means that they will miss whatever will be taught that day. Even when they copy notes, they will miss out on the explanation, failing to fully understand what they have copied.

And for their age-mates who have chosen to attend lessons, 9am-time when classes begin, finds them trekking to school. Meaning, their starting time for classes will be stretched to about 10am.

Meanwhile back in Kampala, primary school-going children from about the age of six are already up by 6am on their way to catch their first lesson that begins at 8am.

Analysing the results
Looking at the results of the just-released Primary Leaving Exams (PLE), it is quite evident that most of the best performing schools were mainly in the urban areas whereas the upcountry schools were among the worst performers.

However, at the time of writing their exams in 2011, all the 5,349,333 pupils were all aiming at passing highly.
But the question is, do these pupils in Kyegegwa, Ibanda, Ntoroko and their other counterparts in upcountry set-ups stand a chance of ever performing as well as their colleagues in the urban schools or even better than them?

The scenarios painted above are some of the factors affecting primary education in rural Uganda despite the fact that the mentioned districts benefit from free education just like their counterparts in urban centres.
In 1996, Uganda became one of the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to introduce the Universal Primary Education (UPE) scheme; a bold step taken by President Museveni’s government.

At the time, several reports by the United Nations said the country has the worst primary school enrollment rates in the world, with only about two million primary school-age children enrolled in class.

Girls and poorer young people comprised the bulk of those locked out of school by financial and cultural constraints.

Under the UPE scheme, all school-age children are expected to study for free in public schools. The government pays the schools a grant of up to Shs7,000 per student, per school term, although the parents have to provide the pupil’s uniform, stationery and meals. In Kampala, parents pay an additional Shs10,000.
According to the government, before the introduction of the scheme, only two million children were attending school but the figure shot up to 6.9 million upon the introduction of the scheme.

The Education ministry, which is the implementing ministry, says a number of achievements have been made in rural areas, most prominent among them being increased enrollment. However, it agrees there are several challenges.

There may be increased access to education at primary level in rural Uganda but the scheme faces grave challenges.

First being the education standards that have continued to drop, something acknowledged by government and continued in several reports by both the UN and educational bodies.

The rural schools, not only face the problem of inadequate infrastructure but also inadequate teaching space and material, a shortage of teachers, and inadequate and late disbursement of government funds.

Poor attitudes
Besides the pupils’ reluctance to go to school, teacher absenteeism in upcountry schools also puts the pupils in those schools at a lesser advantage.

Rev. David Kibonwa, the inspector of schools in Ntoroko District, says he once went to inspect a school and out of the 10 teachers, only three had reported that day, a tendency he says is common in the district.
“Teachers do not appear at school on grounds that they have no transport and that the pupils are never present. So with the teachers and pupils attending as they please, it becomes hard to complete the syllabus,” Rev. Kibonwa says, adding that the inadequate number of teachers in these schools is alarming.
Minister of State for Primary Education Bataringaya Kamanda says according to the UPE programme, “If a school has seven classes, it is entitled to seven teachers.”

While government puts the sealing for teachers-pupil ratio at 1:53, in rural schools such as Migongwe Primary School in Kyegegwa, the ratio stands at 1:178.

However in Kampala, schools under the free education scheme have about 20 teachers. This is evident at Buganda Road Primary School which boasts of 52 teachers, whom according to Ms Beatrice Turyasingura, the school head teacher, were posted to the school by the then Kampala City Council.

Besides the teacher- student ratios being alarming upcountry, some pupils go an entire day without a single meal.

Empty stomachs
During a tour of Migongwe Primary School, in a class of 53 Primary Seven pupils, only 20 had containers of food, 15 had at most Shs200 for lunch whereas the remaining 17 had nothing to eat for lunch.

While urban schools have largely resisted the policy to teach in the local languages, rural schools have adopted it, putting the pupils at a disadvantage since the exams are conducted in English.

This week’s examination results give a hint of this gap, and while Uneb was able to rank over 50 schools as best performing in the whole country, few or none feature from rural areas.

For a year, pupils in rural schools have studied without textbooks.

Jolly, who is in Primary Seven, says she has never held a mathematics or English textbook, though she has seen her teacher with one.

While releasing the PLE exams on Thursday, the Minister of Education, Ms Jessica Alupo, said according to the results, urban areas are still performing better than rural areas.

She attributed the poor performance in the rural schools to the poor pay of teachers, which has resulted in the lack of motivation amongst the rural teachers, the long distances they have to travel while going to school and the poor command of the English language in upcountry schools.

Just like the minister, Mr Isa Matovu, an educationist, also blames the disparity between the upcountry and urban performance on the teachers’ absenteeism.

“Teachers in the schools upcountry are always absent because they are not motivated by the poor pay, they do not have lunch, there is no supervision of schools by the ministry and stakeholders like parents, a loophole that is used by teachers to stay away from school,” Mr Matovu says.

He, however, notes that although teachers in some urban schools work under the same conditions as their colleagues upcountry: “They are always at school because the supervising facilities (parents and the ministry) are close to them and they are always on the outlook.”

Mr Aggrey Kibenge, the spokesperson in the Ministry of Education, also blames the variation between the performance in upcountry schools and urban centres on the different conditions in both areas.

Limited resources
“The conditions under which the children upcountry study and those their colleagues in the urban areas live in are not the same. While the children in urban areas can access facilities such as newspapers, computers, radios and television, which are all learning materials, children in upcountry schools do not access these services. So they only have one source of education which is the class notes.”

Mr Kibenge adds that the nature of parents in urban areas also influences the performance of their children.
“Parents in urban areas are mainly of the working class and this allows them to supplement on the Shs7, 000 government funding towards their UPE pupils.

Meanwhile, parents in rural areas have little or no extra income, making it hard for them to supplement on the government funding. So this leaves their children with no food for lunch and other facilities that can enhance their performance,” he says.

He added that the fact that most parents in the urban areas are working, this influences their children to read harder so that they can be like their parents unlike the ones in the rural areas who have no role models nor motivation.

Mr Richard Sewakiryanga of Uwezo, a research firm, says the large gap between the performance of upcountry schools and the urban schools is as a result of limited resources both financially and the scholastic materials which are very essential in pupils’ learning .

Way forward
In order to reduce on the disparities, Mr Kibenge advises that the government works with local structures, civil society, local communities, parents, Parliament and political leaders to ensure the gradual implementation of reading facilities like computers and well-stocked libraries in the upcountry schools.
Mr Sewakiryanga on the other hand advises that more emphasis should be put on the early lower level of education.

“Children in the early classes like Primary One, Two and Three need to get quality teachers and appropriate education if they are to compete against their urban colleagues,” Mr Sewakiryanga says.

[email protected]