FOURTH DIMENSION: Dump the education status quo first

As the headlines turn away from the national examinations results craze, it is time to consider a new horizon away from focusing on the results. There are two possibilities that would bear more fruit than ranking schools based on students’ performance. The first would be replication of the acclaimed top schools in other regions of the nation. The second would be an aspiration of all top schools to provide higher levels of education for the students.

The greatness of the schools should be measured in terms of capacity to reproduce same quality products in any part of the nation. In this way the examination is not simply of the students but the replication of schools output and the resilience of the school administrative structure. Wouldn’t it be great to have great Budonians from Nakapiripirit campus rising up to be great national leaders? What about international lawyers from the Gayaza campus of Nebbi? If this outlook was pursued, the current bottleneck in extending quality education throughout the nation would be broken.

Given a go ahead, the leaders of the currently assumed great schools have the capacity to stretch their capacity to replicate their schools throughout the nation. The other benefit would be the destruction of the tribal sentiments that often accompany the localised approach to school development. I have an Ateso friend who attended school in Laibi College. You cannot beat the passion he has for this school which is miles away from his homeland. Can we imagine the impact of developing and establishing a highly competitive Laibi college on Buganda soils? Schools should be placed in the news headlines for successful replication and not for examination results. Schools need to be treated as brands that must cover the nation.

Concerning the second point, higher level schools need to pick a leaf from the lower most education schools. Many of the primary schools are an offshoot of their pre-primary effort to give their infants a great start to the journey of education. If these pre-primary schools did not step up to address the need of their pupils, the situation would be worse than what we are currently faced with. Taking on the same mindset of walking with our students to greatness in education, the desirable goal of the education industry needs to be a demand on every registered school to work towards establishing a higher level of education than what is currently offered.

Isn’t it sad that we have a King’s College that only offers secondary education? What was in the mind of the founders of these colleges was releasing graduates for office work and not another college education level? Colleges technically should be producing people ready for work and leadership.

We should neither be content with the current status quo nor rejoice in non strategic activities. After the disciples had had a frustrating night of catching no fish,Jesus told them to cast their nets on the other side of their boat. Similarly we must demand that the leading schools cast their vision to other geographical regions and into higher levels of education.

jcmugabi@gmail.com