Deteriorating standards in church schools worry bishop

MASAKA.

The chairperson of the Buganda Anglican Bishops, Rt Rev Godfrey Makumbi, has expressed concern over the deteriorating academic standards in various church founded schools and institutions as he called for urgent government intervention.

Bishop Makumbi observed that most schools have been neglected by the founding bodies, parents and administrators and have not had a facelift for many years.

“We have Gayaza High School which has maintained its standards, but as the Anglican Church, we need to establish more similar single sex and mixed schools,” Bishop Makumbi, who also doubles as Bishop of West Buganda Diocese, noted.

He was speaking at the weekend at the opening of a three- day annual retreat for Anglican Bishops from central region in Masaka Town. He called upon all dioceses to support their schools in order to uplift the academic standards that the traditional schools boasted of in the past.
The bishop also expressed concern over the criteria used to post head teachers and other staff to church-founded schools as he blamed the church itself for failure to identify better staff to man its schools.

“We should again scrutinise the people who are given the mandate to manage school committees and boards. Many of them are ignorant of what they are supposed to do while others go there for selfish interests resulting into the low standards,” he told the participants who included retired Anglican bishops and their spouses.