Ministry puzzled over rising school dropouts

Government has continued to fail to account for millions of pupils and students who continue to drop out of school every year.
Statistics from the Ministry of Education and Sports indicate that while millions of children enrol for primary education, big numbers drop out either before reaching Primary Seven or after completing the Primary Leaving Examinations.
The trend continues with another percentage dropping out in secondary school. Ministry officials say they are puzzled by the dropout rate.

Figures from the ministry indicate that in 2019, two million pupils joined pre-primary educational institutions. The numbers rose to 10.8 million in primary school but dropped to 1.95 million in secondary school. In universities, enrolment declined from 186,412 students in 2017 to 125,173 in 2019. Other tertiary institutions showed 186,383 students enrolling, up from 147,743 in 2017.
At the time government rolled out the Universal Primary Education programme in 1997, the number of pupils enrolled jumped from 3.1 million in 1996 to 5.3 million in 1997, an increase of 73 per cent in one year. Of the total figures, 2,159,850, enrolled in primary one. However, by 2002, when the first set of the UPE candidates sat the Primary Leaving Examinations, the figures were down to 401,000, representing 18.6 per cent completion rate.

According to the World Bank report for 2016, the survival rate to the last grade of lower secondary general education for males in Uganda was reported at 63.59 per cent, while that of the females stood at 62.0 per cent.
Mr David Ssegendo, the chairperson of Uganda Head Teachers Association, said the issue of drop out is real and that concerted efforts should be made to address it. Mr Ssegendo said parents who allow their children to drop out of school must pay heavy penalties for negligence.
During the presentation of the performance of NRM manifesto on Saturday, Ms Janet Museveni, the minister of Education, said dropping out of school is a big problem they have noted over the years.

Ministry strategy
She said moving forward, the ministry has embarked on tracing children who drop out of school.
“We have given ourselves that assignment to track the children because that question keeps on coming and we are also concerned. But we also now know we have technical education that people do not consider as education. Many of the children go from primary and don’t want to continue with secondary, so they do go for technical education,” Ms Museveni said. In 2019, 125,383 students were enrolled in universities in August 2019 compared to 186,412 during the same period in 2017.

Asked about the variations, the minister said many might have joined technical and vocational institutions after deliberate campaigns by the government.
“Initially, technical education was looked down upon and was not popular, but we have been talking about it this period and it is picking up. We now see that every year, number of people going to technical has increased, but we have not known how many actually go there and do not go to secondary schools and universities,” she said.

Key gains
Ms Museveni said over time, government has continued to build more infrastructure to improve teaching and learning conditions in schools. She said last year, government constructed 929 classrooms in 145 primary schools that had less than three permanent classrooms. She also said 23 community schools were grant-aided by government.

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