Ernst & Young, Monitor partner to uplift needy schools standards

Agreement. Ernst and Young country manager Geoffrey Byamugisha exchanges the Memorandum of Understanding with the MPL head of marketing Sarah Nalule Walakira in Kampala on Tuesday. PHOTO BY STEPHEN OTAGE

What you need to know:

  • Sarah Nalule the Monitor Publications head of marketing said when the company launched the Newspapers in Education project in 2007, the idea was to improve literacy and numeracy skills among pupils in poor performing schools but along the way, they found that the problem was bigger than they had anticipated.

Kampala. Audit Firm Ernst and Young and the Monitor Publications have launched a partnership where employees of the two companies will start volunteering their skills in needy primary schools to improve standards.
Speaking at the signing ceremony for the event on Tuesday, Mr Geoffrey Byamugisha, the Ernst and Young country manager said as a company, they believe in a world where they make a better tomorrow today because they believe that to have a better future, the steps to attain it start today and they are ready to send their staff to needy schools to volunteer their skills and time to ensure that such needy schools improve on their literacy and numeracy standards. “This is just the beginning. We want to see how far we can go. We shall be sending our staff to these schools to volunteer their time and skills in their areas of expertise so that we can improve the numeracy and literary skills,” he said.
Sarah Nalule the Monitor Publications head of marketing said when the company launched the Newspapers in Education project in 2007, the idea was to improve literacy and numeracy skills among pupils in poor performing schools but along the way, they found that the problem was bigger than they had anticipated.
“In 2016, the NIE campaign dubbed ‘help them learn to read’ was launched with an agenda to attract socially responsible companies like Ernest and Young to sponsor pupils through their schools with newspapers,” she said.
Ms Nalule explained that the teachers use newspapers as teaching aids in schools to improve on the effectiveness of the curriculum and in turn help with the learner’s literacy and numeracy adding that NIE strives to ensure that the output at Primary leaving examinations and Uganda Certificate of Education reduced the number of ungraded pupils or none at all
Ernst and Young will be providing each school with five copies of the Daily Monitor newspapers per week and the impact of the intervention will be reviewed for consideration whether to continue or stop it.