Poor performance not due to laziness

For State minister for Water Ronald Kibuule to say head teachers’ laziness is the reason for the consistent poor performance in government-aided schools is a misrepresentation of the actual challenges affecting learners’ performance in many Ugandan schools.
It is true that teachers are an important link in the chain of quality performance for pupils. But I argue that 90 per cent of workers who are motivated to love their jobs would not simply underperform because of laziness. This is why I find Kibuule’s remarks ironical. I challenge the minister to have a meaningful engagement with teachers, pupils and parents so as to understand why the people he claims are “earning more” than others in private schools are lazy to deliver on quality.

I would have also loved to hear the minister’s thoughts on sustainable solutions for the entire education sector in the country. I acknowledge the promising transitions in Uganda’s education sector since the early 90s but I note that implementing these commitments remains vital for actual transformation of the sector. According to the Global Education Monitoring Report (2015), only 40 per cent of learners in Uganda had benefited from early childhood initiatives in 2011. In 2007, efforts to subsidise Early Childhood Centres were highlighted but this has not taken effect in many parts of the country.

I would also like to draw the minister’s attention to the underlying inequalities faced by different pupils in varying parts of the country. This I will equate with asking a short person and a much taller one to touch the same roof. We all know it is impossible except if the short person is given a slightly higher stepper. As long as we do not deliberately set out to integrate psychosocial support in education programmes for northern Uganda for instance, school feeding programmes across UPE schools and especially rural schools as well as engage parents and the community as key player among other solutions, we will continue to blame one actor but attain less.
Dinnah Nabwire,
nabwire.dinah@yahoo.com