Buyende school where pupils use sacks as seats

Pupils at Butaswa Primary School, Bugaya Sub-county in Buyende District, carry with them sacks to school to sit on given the shortage of desks.

Located about 14 kilometres from Kamuli Municipality, the school, which started in 1962 as a community school and was taken over by government in 1993, grapples with many challenges.

Each Primary One to Primary Four pupil spreads a sack on a concrete floor while those in other classes sit at desks, which are each shared by five pupils, in a ramshackled building without windows and doors.

With a population of 872 pupils, the school has only 59 desks for 295 pupils in upper classes, while the remaining 577 pupils sit on the floor.
A visit to the school by this reporter, found the pupils playing while holding onto their sacks to ward off classmates who do not have.

Seven-year-old Haruna Matege, a Primary One pupil, is one of the several who carry sacks to school every day.
Clad in a black pair of shorts and purple shirt, barefoot Matege clutches a book and sack in his left and right hand respectively as he walks to school.
The head teacher of the school, Mr Robert Nabwana, says pupils move with their sacks for fear of losing them since they are not labelled.

“If the pupils are not in class, they are supposed to move with their sacks because we can’t their names on them,” Mr Nabwana notes.
“And once it is time to go home, we always encourage them to move with their sacks and return with them in the morning,” he adds.

Mr Nabwana says they get Shs4m as capitation grant on a quarterly basis, which is too little to run the school, including buying desks enough for all the pupils.
“We use the Shs4m to buy instruction materials, including books, manila papers, flip charts, chalk and to cater for co-curricular activities. The money has restrictions, so you just can’t divert it,” he explains.

Challenging
Mr Nabwana adds that although last financial year they received 36 desks from the district, they need at least 144 more desks to cater for the remaining pupils.
Ms Joyce Nandase, who teaches Primary One pupils, says it is challenging to teach such children how to write while on a dusty floor.

“You can see them; they are using their knees for support while writing and can’t perfect their writing skills. Cleanliness is also another challenge as their books are always dirty. Those without seats always share with their colleagues,’’ she reveals. Mr Patrick Wanume, a parent and former pupil of the same school, says the situation is improving, reasoning that previously, they studied under trees and using grass as their seats.

LEADERS SAY...

The Buyende District Education Officer, Mr Dison Bwire, last Friday said the school facility grant they get every year is meant for the construction of classroom blocks in four schools, including furnishing them.
“Butaswa Primary School is not in the program this financial year because there are other schools which are in a worse state.

Inadequate funding is the biggest problem and there is nothing much we can do because we are currently financially handicapped,” he said.
Mr Bwire continued: “The absence of desks in the school discourages pupils from developing handwriting skills, performing well and attending school daily because it is boring.”
The Buyende District Chairperson, Mr Robert Ziribasanga, described the district Shs23b budget as “very little to cater for all the services”.

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