Opposition demand plan for reopening of schools

The Opposition in Parliament has tabled a report about the state of education in the country, demanding from government a detailed school reopening plan ahead of the resumption of learning in January next year.

The statement tabled by the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Mr Mathias Mpuuga on Tuesday, outlines six key areas that they say the government must address before schools can reopen. These include the confusing status of learners under lockdown, increasing teenage pregnancies, discrepancies in teachers, instructors’ remunerations, and the sorry state of schools.

Other are inequalities in the education sector, stalled cohorts in schools, lack of learning materials, and change in teacher education policy.

“A comprehensive resurgence plan for the education sector should immediately be presented to Parliament, indicating the actual dates when schools will be reopened for Parliament scrutiny and appropriation of required funds to be undertaken. The school inspection programme for Local Government level should also be revamped and adequately funded to ensure responsive and continued human capital development,” the statement reads in part.

Education ministry spokesperson Denis Mugimba said a detailed plan, which is being finalised, will soon be unveiled.

“The minister of Education will give the public all the details…at some point,” Mr Mugimba said in a telephone interview with Daily Monitor.

President Museveni cleared tertiary institutions to reopen on November 1. He later allowed the rest — including secondary, primary, and nursery — to resume in January 2022 after being closed for nearly two years.

But since that clearance, the Ministry of Education has not guided on the specificities around the reopening. Of particular concern is when candidates in Primary Seven, Senior Four and Senior Six will sit for their final examinations set by the Uganda National Examinations Board.

Mr Mugimba said yesterday that the new guidelines will make a pronouncement on how learners at primary (Primary one, Primary Two and Primary Three) and secondary (Senior One and Senior Two) levels will be promoted. It is believed these will be taken through a remedial process for the first few weeks to brush up their knowledge from previous classes.

“The class we don’t have at the moment is the Primary Four class in the lower primary, but these will come from the current Primary Three pupils and they will be taken through remedial sessions for them to recover,” Mr Mugimba said.

He added: “But from Primary Four to Primary Six, they will be automatically promoted to the next classes.”

Responding to the correlation between the lockdowns and teenage pregnancies, Mr Mugimba revealed that between March 2020 and October 2021, teenage pregnancies totalling 354,736 were reported.

He added that in the first six months of 2021, registered teenage pregnancies numbered 196,499.

He advised legislators to look at the issue of teenage pregnancies not as an education matter, but rather a “social issue.”

Early this year, the First Lady — who also doubles as the Education minister, Ms Janet Museveni, directed that no one be dismissed from school on account of getting pregnant.

Interventions

The other recommendations presented by the Opposition in Parliament included “providing tax holidays to private schools and they should be given credit facilities by government, establish clear guidelines on how the government will ensure compliance of the new fees structures and minimum qualifications for the teachers as proposed by the government.”

Education ministry spokesperson Denis Mugimba revealed that the government “has not promised any particular money in terms of credit to private schools.”

He, however, hastened to add that “there are tax incentives that the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) announced that [private schools] can benefit from.”

The tax waivers will be premised on “how school files their returns.”

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