A teacher facilitates a lesson at Nyumanzi Primary School in Nyumanzi Refugee Settlement in Adjumani District in June 2025. PHOTO/DANIEL KIBET
Dwindling humanitarian funding has seen hundreds of child refugees in northern Uganda drop out of school.
Most of them are forced out of classrooms due to lack of food.
The World Food Programme initially supplied food to some schools but that support is no more.
Education authorities there warn that the situation is rapidly worsening and there is need for urgent intervention.
Ms Harriet Aserua, the headteacher of Nyumanzi Primary School in Nyumanzi Refugee Settlement camp in Adjumani District, says most of her pupils have dropped out of school in recent months.
There are 379 refugee pupils at Nyumanzi Primary School, while the nationals are 296, bringing the total to 675.
But there are only seven teachers, with only three of them on government pay-roll.
“And we have now recruited two PTA [Parent-Teacher Association] teachers from the community.
Most learners here are Dinkas from South Sudan and we don’t understand their language.
So we employed two teachers from their community to help us with interpretation.
The parents are paying these two,” Ms Aserua said.
Windle International Uganda, a humanitarian agency that supports refugees and marginalised communities, initially employed and paid two other teachers, but their contracts were terminated earlier this year because the organisation no longer receives donations as before and couldn’t pay them anymore.
To rescue the situation, the management of Nyumanzi Primary School decided to source for funds from the parents and retained the two on temporary basis.
Their fate is now uncertain.
Mr Ben Anguma, the Windle International Uganda manager at Nyumanzi Refugee Settlement Camp, says the organisation supports hundreds of teachers in 33 primary schools across Adjumani District.
“Last year, Windle International Uganda was supporting 350 teachers in Adjumani.
We lost 162 of them due to funding gaps.
We couldn’t pay them anymore,” Mr Anguma said.
The teacher to pupil ratio at Nyumanzi Primary School is abnormal.
Teachers have been forced to do donkey work, unlike their colleagues in most schools across the country.
For instance, Mr Maurice Julius Anzo, teaches all the four subjects in Primary Seven where he is also the class teacher.
This is despite it being a candidate class that requires maximum attention.
He also teaches some subjects in Primary Six and Primary Four and he is also the class teacher of Primary One.
His other six colleagues have almost the same work load as his.
“The work here is tedious.
Sometimes I even fail to cook for myself because of exhaustion.
I have a family but I rarely visit them.
I have been forced to conduct lessons on weekends in order to cover the syllabus but the situation is getting out of hand,” Mr Anzo said.
He handles a class of about 40 candidates, who are expected to compete with others across the nation in the Primary Leaving Examinations in November.
At Nyumanzi Primary School, only P.7 candidates get meals at school.
The parents and the school contribute resources to implement the feeding programme.
The rest of the learners either stay hungry throughout the day or rush home for lunch and resume studies in the afternoon.
“Children normally run away in the afternoon because of hunger.
Majority of them invade sorghum farms and eat their stems during harvest time because we don’t feed them here,” Ms Aserua said.
However, sourcing for food and monetary contributions from parents, especially from a refugee community, is an uphill task because most of them receive little or no support from refugee agencies due to decline in refugee funding.
The situation in Nyumanzi Primary School cuts across all the refugee hosting districts in northern Uganda.
Pupils attend class at Nyumanzi Primary School in Nyumanzi Refugee Settlement in Adjumani District in June 2025. PHOTO/DANIEL KIBET
Schools such as Idiwa Parents Secondary school in Palorinya Refugee Settlement in Obongi District and Nipata Secondary School in Bidibidi Refugee Settlement in Yumbe District have also been greatly affected due to dwindling humanitarian funding.
Mr Caleb Turyagumizamu, the deputy headteacher of Nipata Secondary School, says the school has lost teachers who were recruited and paid by Windle International.
As a result, the parents, most of whom are refugees, have been forced to incur extra costs as contribution towards paying some of the teachers who the school contracted to fill the gaps.
The management of Idiwa Parents Secondary School is considering to hike school fees, which is already a burden to the struggling parents.
The students pay Shs40,000 per term but the headteacher, Mr Japheth Jomaring, said this fee could go up once the school management and parents agree.
Like other schools in refugee settlements, Idiwa Parents Secondary School has lost teachers due to decline in humanitarian funding and this has greatly hindered teaching and learning.
Students from the refugee community are worried they could drop out of school in case of further decline in humanitarian funding.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees requires $361m (about Shs1.3 trillion) to ably support humanitarian assistance in Uganda in 2025.
Only 24 percent or about 317 billion shillings of this budget had been funded by May 31, an indicator of how dire the situation is.
Only time will tell if things can improve.
