Teacher registration is right thing to do

The decision by government to register all teachers in the country is a step in the right direction in improving quality of learning.

The Sunday Monitor reported yesterday that academic documents of 15,706 teachers were rejected in the Teacher Management Information System (TMIS) after they appeared fake, did not appear in the manual lists of their graduating institutions or they did not upload all required papers.

The TMIS requires teachers across the country to furnish government with their bio data and all academic qualifications, which are then verified with respective institutions.

We approve of this development for various reasons. The quality of our education is a matter that has been under serious scrutiny over the years.

In February last year, the World Bank said Uganda’s education was struggling with poor quality and low retention of learners in school.

The report; Facing Forward Schooling for Learning in Africa, placed Uganda and Tanzania in group two which comprises countries with high dropout rates for children of primary school age and low retention of pupils.

Kenya was ranked in group one, which comprises countries whose primary enrolment and retention was almost 100 per cent.

The report identified poor teacher training, language of instruction in school, teacher and learner absenteeism, teaching materials and overcrowded classrooms, and low budget with 60 per cent of the sector’s money going to wages as main hindrances to a conducive learning environment in Uganda.

Several other studies have also attributed poor pay, long distances to school, poor infrastructure, poor monitoring, and quack teachers, among others, as the reasons for poor academic performance.

Now that the government is sieving the teachers, we hope that this would be the first – and not the last – phase in sorting out the mess that is education. We expect that the Ministry of Education will now seek to recruit more teachers, pay them better and deploy them according to need and relevance.

We also now hope that with the information available, the government will be able to monitor the sector better, know who has which skills and who needs to be trained, retooled or promoted.

We also ask the government that teachers in private schools should be asked to register and all private schools must employ only those with certificates. According to the Ministry of Education spokesperson, Mr Patrick Muinda, only 3,332 teachers were from the private schools compared with 259,000 from government-aided institutions.