Discriminating teachers on pay is apartheid

The recent standoff  between the Uganda National Teachers Union and the government over salary increment should be viewed as a gap in our education policy that gives more credence to meritocracy; a scapegoat to further broaden the inequality. 

Thus, the political proposal that Science teachers be paid more salary than their Arts counterparts is in my view, antiquated, devoid of merit and, harmful to the education sector. 

A few months ago there was a similar political pronouncement that Science subjects would be taught in vernacular. Such declarations lead to the temptation of concluding that either such government officials are ill-advised, have wrong ideological motives or are gambling with the education policy.

The arrangement of paying Science subject teachers higher wages than their Arts counterparts promotes more apartheid in the education sector. 

Uganda’s education system already suffers from such apartheid that requires urgent and systemic redress.  There is, for example, a huge difference between schools in the urban and rural settings of Uganda, with urban schools displaying better shapes and performances than the former. 

Other exhibitions of apartheid in education manifest in regional imbalance, and the economic disparity between the rich and the poor. Consequently, the disparities in educational access attainment are related to the disparity in regions, economic status and rural-urban disparities.

To produce more competent Science workforces, we need to allocate sufficient funding to build and fully equip laboratories in every school versus spending money on the salaries of Science teachers.  

And parenthetically, such allocations should also be made available for Arts subjects since both Arts and Science are equally important in contributing to national development. 

For Science subjects and courses particularly, rather than considering the strategy of higher pay, the government needs to invest in building the capacity of individuals and groups who have made or are trying to make significant inventions.  

A distinctive example includes Prof Ogwantg who invented the covidex, a drug for treating COVID19), the fellows who invented the Kira bus and the Makerere University comrade who designed and produced tear gas. 

Teachers and other Scientists who demonstrate skills in innovation and significant research can be supported in their studies as opposed to the assumption that increasing the salary of a science teacher can change the country. 

Another approach could be to render Science courses affordable if not free to produce many scientists as possible.  The government has already established science-oriented universities across Uganda and one of the most important things is to stock those facilities and make courses easily accessible. Comparatively, it is the unreasonably high cost of science courses that compel graduates of sciences subjects to demand higher pay or leave the country for greener pastures in developed continents like Europe and America.

I think subsidizing the fees of these courses will increase the number of Science graduates and can help retain them in the country. The government could also take the approach of signing a memorandum of understanding with those students whom they sponsor so that they remain working and serving in Uganda for some time. This is one of the conditions in foreign scholarships such as the Commonwealth, Chevening, the World Bank and others which ensure that their scholarship beneficiaries commit to returning to their home countries where they are expected to contribute to their local development. 

Our system’s failure to promote equitable access to quality education at all levels manifests in the performance variance at national examinations and in access to some of the courses which are considered more esteemed. 

These courses are dominated by students who have had access to quality education from Primary through to secondary levels of education and they have been qualified by economic and geographical factors. 

If we don’t address this logically, the economic inequity will follow the same trajectory.

We must take investment in equitable access to education as a serious matter by devoting to it a considerable portion of our GDP to allow access to quality education for every Ugandan child regardless of their degree of poverty or wealth or the height of their social capital. This is because research proves that exclusion from education is more likely to be the outcome of the systematic discrimination of a certain group.

Peter Cromwell Okello
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