7, 000 teachers needed in refugee camps, says report

Kampala. A new Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report has named Uganda for having the best practice of bringing humanitarian and development partners together to fund its education plan that looks at reaching more than 675,000 refugees and host students per year.
However, the report titled ‘Building bridges, not walls’ notes that Uganda needs an extra 7, 000 primary school teachers to educate the refugees which is estimated to cost the country $15 million (Shs56 billion) in salary payments over the next three years.
The Uganda Media Centre executive director, Mr Ofwono Opondo, yesterday said: “The government is borrowing money to expand education, health, water and road infrastructure in 12 refugee host districts.”

Loan approved
Officials from the Office of the Prime Minister last week said that Parliament had earlier approved a request to borrow $50m (Shs187b) for the construction of classrooms, health facilities and road infrastructure in refugee hosting districts and had requested for an additional $150m (Shs560b) for infrastructure development.
The GEM report also appreciates the political will for change in some countries such as Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda for housing more than half of the region’s refugees and 12 per cent of the world’s refugees.
“Other positive initiatives aimed at making education more inclusive are also taking place in champion countries such as Uganda. Hosting the largest number of refugees, Uganda targets funding for those with disabilities, covering their costs of learning materials, uniforms and boarding fees,” the report notes.
“While nearly half of 26 active refugee and humanitarian response plans globally show no mention of early childhood education needs, Uganda is improving the number of certified caregivers and centres. Uganda is also rolling out a Refugee Education Management Information System to help collect and analyse data on refugees’ education,” the reports adds. The 2019 GEM report by UNESCO on migration and displacement looked at the progress and challenges in educating refugees around the world.
It points out that sub-Saharan Africa houses almost a third of all refugees in the world and this is putting huge strain on already struggling education systems.
It further notes that there is need to integrate refugee children into national systems of education and recommended training of teachers to manage multilingual classrooms.
“Large movements of people have huge implications for education systems” said Manos Antoninis, Director of the GEM Report.