When will agency to spearhead school inspections be formed?

The promise:
One of the commitments that the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) made to Ugandans if it were re-elected to take charge of matters of state between 2016 and 2021 was to work towards strengthening the school inspectorate.

The idea was that it would form and facilitate a special organ under the Ministry of Education and Sports to take charge of it.
“In order to strengthen inspection in schools and training institutions, we will establish a semi-autonomous body in charge of inspecting schools. The new body will have powers to compel district officials to take action on its reports and if they fail, Government will act on them,” the NRM’s 2016-2021 manifesto reads in parts.

The promise was made in face of the need to improve academic standards in the schools. The NRM will always be credited for the introduction of Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Secondary Education (USE).

The introduction of UPE led to a sharp increment in enrolment. Within the first year alone, enrolment for primary education increased by 73 per cent rising to 5.3 million, up from 3.1 million pupils. The enrolment had by 2003 reached the 127 per cent mark with 7.6 million pupils in schools.

During the same period, the number of primary schools also increased by 4,822 rising from 8,531 in 1996 to 13,353 in 2003.

The number of primary school teachers also increased by 78 per cent, rising from 81,564 teachers in 1996 to 145,587 teachers in 2003.

However, the introduction of UPE occasioned a drop in the quality of education that most of the schools could offer with UPE schools etching themselves a name in the hall of perennial under-performers in national examinations.

The situation was blamed on a high teacher to pupil ratio, a terrible pupil-classroom ratio and pupil to textbook ratio.

Government responded by constructing more classrooms under the Schools Facilitation Grant (SFG) programme. The classrooms were too congested to allow for effective teaching and learning and there were so few textbooks to go around.

Government responded by buying more textbooks and furniture and deploying more teachers in the schools, but most schools under the universal education programme still cannot provide quality education, but provision of quality education and matching improvements in academic performance in the universal education schools system continued to be a challenge.

The second report on the quality of UPE titled First Monitoring and Evaluation Report for Quality Enhancement Initiative, the product of a study carried by Makerere University’s Institute of Social Research (MISR) in 12 districts that had the worst performance in PLE in 2008 and sampled 225 schools in the districts of Nakapiripirit, Kaabong, Oyam, Amuru, Arua, Nebbi, Bududa, Bukedea, Kyenjojo, Buliisa, Lyantonde and Mubende suggested that failure by government to address provision of meals in schools was one of the factors affecting performance.

Others were teacher absenteeism, weaknesses in the schools management structures, and lack of inspection by officials from the Ministry of Education and Sports with some schools indicating that they had not been visited by any inspectors while others indicated that they had been inspected only once.

A value for money audit carried out in 2009 by the Auditor General following the increase of the failure rate in PLE from 17 per cent in 2005 to 22 per cent in 2008 revealed that while inspection of schools was meant to be carried out by the Directorate of Education Standards of the Ministry of Education and Sports the department was badly understaffed.

“The Directorate had a staffing level of only 46 per cent of the approved establishment. The resultant high inspector – school ratio at the national and regional levels made it practically impossible for ESA inspectors to regularly inspect all the schools, monitor and coordinate the district inspections,” the report reads in part.

The report further says whereas the handbook for schools inspections provides for four types of inspection to be carried out on each school, namely a full inspection, which has to be carried out once a year; a short/routine inspections which has to be carried out once a term; flying visits, adhoc and follow up inspections, which have to be carried out at least 18 months from when the last inspection was done, schools were not regularly inspected.

It attributed the irregular inspections to low staffing levels of inspectors, inadequate supervision and monitoring of inspectors and inadequate provision of logistics especially fuel and vehicles.

“This resulted into laxity in attendance by both teachers and pupils thus high absenteeism among the teachers and pupils, conflicts in schools, teachers’ under-performance and low syllabus coverage hence poor performance in schools,” the report points.

Recommendations
Some of the recommendations that the report made were that the Ministry recruits more schools inspectors; puts in place a system for motivating inspectors; conducts regular workshops and seminars for inspectors; develops a strategic plan for school inspections; trains head teachers on how to develop school improvement plans; trains district administrators in monitoring and evaluation and in preparation of inspection work plans.
Given that the recommendations of the Auditor General had not been acted upon it had been envisaged that the new body that the NRM had proposed would be the one to see them through.

OFFICIAL POSITION
The spokesperson of the Ministry of Education and Sports, Mr Aggrey Kibenge, said no such body has been formed to take charge of inspection adding that the work is being done by the Directorate of Education Standards (DES).

“The Ministry is strengthening the inspectorate arm and it is being done by DES. Whether it will be made an independent agency is part of on an ongoing discussion on whether certain departments under ministries should be turned into agencies or whether some agencies should be turned into desks under ministries,” he said.

He was, however, quick to point out that DES is for all intents and purposes semi-autonomous.

Though it still reports to the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education, he said, it has its own offices in Kyambogo, runs an own budget and has own links to the various district education departments.

DAILY MONITOR POSITION
If what Mr Aggrey Kibenge says is anything to go by, DES has, in line with the recommendations contained in the Auditor General’s March 2012 report, been moving to bolster its numbers to be able to become more effective on the ground, but taking on numbers is not the issue here. Retaining them is.

Retention of workers depends on how you remunerate and motivate them. We do agree that people are motivated by different things, but the biggest motivator for most has been creation of a good working environment and availing them with the necessary tools, which seems to be a problem in most government agencies.

The last time medical doctors went on strike, they raised issues around pay, a poor working environment and lack of basic tools to facilitate their work.

Now that DES is strengthening, there is need to ensure that the inspectorate is equipped with vehicles, fuel, stationery etc. There is evidence to suggest that performance was much better back then when government used to provide the schools inspectors with vehicles and motorcycles.

We agree that the economy could have fallen on hard times and that the government has been finding it difficult to provide them now especially as it needed to free up resources for investment in educational infrastructure like classrooms, laboratories and libraries etc, but what use are those structures if they cannot help the country provide a good education to its citizens or build the kind of manpower that will help it to achieve the kind of national development that it aspires?