
Mr Muniini K. Mulera
Dear Tingasiga:
The Hansard of the Uganda Parliament recorded an excellent debate in the House that occurred on Monday, August 28, 2000. Members of Parliament considered The Report of the Sessional Committee on Social Services on the Budget for the Fiscal Year 2000/2001.
After Timothy Mutesasira (Busiro East), the chairperson of the committee, presented a summary of the report, there followed a debate on the education, sports and health sectors in which very good recommendations were made.
I was particularly struck by three recommendations in the education sector, whose implementation and impact, a quarter of a century later, invite an update from the Ministry of Education or another knowledgeable source.
Five contributors to the debate stand out for me. I will very briefly summarise and paraphrase their submissions.
Sam Kutesa (Mawogola County, Sembabule): To address the education disparity between urban and rural students, we should begin to consider setting up just 20 long-distance education tele-centres in 20 districts. This would not cost more than five million US dollars.
It would minimise costs because people do not have to move to urban areas to study, and you would teach many more students than you can admit at universities. This would also mean standardisation of education material.
Rural areas should access the same quality of education as people in urban areas. These telecentres can also be put to multipurpose use. Modernisation of education, agriculture and health could be done in this way.
Abel Rwendeire (Minister of State for Higher Education): The Ministry of Education and Sports will be introducing an Open University of Uganda. This was contained in the Government White Paper of 1992, following a report by Prof Ssenteza Kajubi’s commission.
The recommendation at that time was that the Open University of Uganda should be introduced by the year 2000. The ministry set up a committee to look at the modalities of establishing the Open University of Uganda in 1999.
This committee, which presented their report to the Ministry of Education in June 2000, recommended modalities that included long-distance education tele-centres. The Open University of Uganda will be established before the end of the year 2000.
Michael Mukula (Soroti Municipality): The Uganda Science Council, of which I am a board member, already has a programme to set up telecentres. We already have one telecentre on the ground, and we shall have progressed before the end of this year.
In the last meeting we held in Mozambique, we discussed the setting up of these telecentres. The Government of Uganda has a programme jointly with Senegal, Kenya, and South Africa to set up telecentres.
However, I would like to see an integrated education curriculum. Arthur Bagunywa (Mityana South, Mityana): Educators agree that we take children to school to teach them three things: knowledge, which addresses educating the head, skills for training the hand, and values for educating the heart.
For a long time in this country, we have addressed ourselves to educating the head. We give students knowledge of English, Mathematics, Science and Social Studies without teaching them skills in agriculture, business, technical education, including the ability to repair implements on the farm, as well as management of their homes and other enterprises.
Teaching of ethics and values must start when children are young. Our attempt to try and get honesty and reliability at the adult stage is futile. There is an urgent need to restructure our policies to attract the best brains to go into primary school teaching.
We shall achieve this by offering free education in primary school teacher training colleges. We need teachers who are good at mathematics, English or languages, music, science - good at everything.
This is the G-factor in education, for those people who know educational psychology.
The person who is good at everything is way above one who has special ability in a single subject. We have failed to attract good brains in our primary Teacher Training Colleges.
If we can waive cost sharing for primary teacher education, we will attract good and effective brains with a G-factor.
Nelson Gagawala Wambuzi (Bulamogi County, Kamuli): Why are we educating our children and for what? Are we educating them to learn how to consume imported goods?
Are we educating our people to fight both mental and material poverty? It appears that we are educating our children to go round in circles.
We are educating our children to become a market for foreigners. Are we really teaching our children to learn or are we just teaching them how to cram things like parrots?
At what age are our children expected to start school? Is it three years, six years or nine years? Abel Rwendeire: The Ministry of Education’s minimum age for starting school is five years.
Gagawala Wambuzi: I am stressing the issue of five years to nine years, because that is the prime age for children to learn how to learn. That is the time when you teach children the skills of identification of patterns.
If you do not teach mathematics well before the age of nine, it will be too late to try to turn somebody into a mathematician after that. So, if our children have difficulties with mathematics and science, it is because we are making mistakes at that tender age.
If the curriculum is not focused on which products we shall need in the economy in the next five years, and we just have a general curriculum, it is possible that we shall not get out of poverty in this country. The real problem is poverty.
The government should give loans to all students who qualify to enter secondary school and university. It is better for you to give a loan to someone to go to a secondary school and a tertiary institution than to give them a loan when they have already failed.
Twenty-five years later, three questions arise: Was the establishment of long-distance telecentres scaled up to meet the excellent recommendations by Sam Kutesa? Was the Open University of Uganda operationalised?
I do not see it on the National Council of Higher Education’s list of registered universities. Was the cost of student and primary teacher education waived or subsidised to meet Arthur Bagunywa’s expert advice? If so, what has been the impact.
If not, why not? I honour Kutesa, Mukula, Bagunywa and Wambuzi for their visionary contributions on this critical subject 25 years ago. It would give me great pleasure to receive good news about their recommendations.