Education suspends closure of schools

Early this year, the ministry of Education and Sports started a nationwide closure of unlicensed schools. In just two months more than 1,300 illegal schools have been closed. Yudaya Nangonzi talked to HUZAIFAH ABDULLAH MUTAZINDWA, the director of the directorate of Education Standards (DES), which is mandated to implement this exercise.

What prompted the ministry to start this nationwide closure of schools?

As you know, the public is very concerned about the declining quality of education in the country. Last year, we invited the education authorities from local governments at the ministry to discuss the quality of education. What clearly came out of that meeting is that one; with liberalization of education, many schools have mushroomed.

But proprietors forgot … to adhere to the education regulations. In that meeting, we agreed that we needed to work on unlicensed schools because a number of things were going wrong.

People were using untrained teachers … in cases where they had trained teachers, they were encroaching on those in already established in private and government schools.

The sanitation facilities were poor; no spaces for co-curricular activities. We later resolved to warn these schools last year that come 2017, we are not going to allow unlicensed schools to operate. We also told proprietors to put things in order before we close their schools.

Did you get any applications to get licenses then?

Yes. Quite a number of unlicensed schools came to us especially those that had the basic and minimum requirements to operate a school. Those that had some gaps here and there managed to address them and have gone through the licensing process.

What are the basic requirements?

These include teaching space, at least for a primary school, each class must have a teacher, teaching and learning materials, sanitation and sitting facilities like desks and play areas. 

We have booklets that have all these requirements and proprietors should pick them for guidance. Once a school has those requirements, it can seek a license from the ministry to allow it to operate.

Take us through the licensing process.

The process of licensing schools starts from the local government because the education institution must conform to the development plan and zoning of the area.

When all people at that level are approached, the inspector of schools will come and then the district education officer appends his signature to your file which he/she later sends to the ministry for approval.

Is the license issued at a fee?

No. All ministry of education services are free and we don’t charge private schools to go through all those processes of licensing and registering.

How many districts have so far submitted reports of schools that have been closed?

We have about 70 districts which have, and [others] are still submitting reports because the closure exercise is continuous. You cannot close all schools at once since we need to visit many schools.

I must say … we are working closely with the local governments where the schools are located. Any school that they find without a license or a registration certificate, they close it.

But the countrywide closure of schools has got mixed reactions from the public. What could be the problem?

I think what we really need to know is that yes, the Constitution of the republic of Uganda liberalized education. This means that any person or organisation can establish a school but conditioned on meeting the requirements set by government.

The Education Act 2008 [gives] full effect of the provisions of the Constitution and also the education policies. Also, part seven of the Act under section 31 clearly stipulates the process which one has to follow to establish and operate a private school. So, any school that starts without a license becomes an illegal school. I want to emphasize that we have not been closing legal schools.
 
But why are some MPs concerned about the exercise?

Yes, we were doing the right thing but many members of parliament were trying to evoke section 39 of the same Education Act, [so] people [can] appeal against certain decisions taken by the ministry. However, the section only covers schools that were already issued with licenses or registration certificates.

Legal schools can go ahead and appeal under the appeals tribunal section 53 of the Act. So, now the schools being closed are operating outside the same law we are referring to.

You will recall that a number of circulars have gone out reminding proprietors that it is illegal to operate a school that has not been sanctioned by the ministry but they did not care to report back to the ministry.

What about complaints that government schools in bad condition have been spared in this exercise?

The process of starting a government school is different from that of private and when it comes to closure, it is the same. In fact, government has a plan to improve even those schools that people say are in bad shape.

Of course due to financial constraints in the sector, you cannot work on all the schools at the same time. But again it is important to note that maybe people are looking at the infrastructure of government schools, but at least they [have] trained teachers, teaching and learning materials and sanitation facilities, among others.

Is the ministry closing only primary schools?

Our jurisdiction for closing schools includes nursery, primary, secondary and part of BTVET institutions. So far, schools in excess of 1,300 have been closed. At the post-primary level, learners and parents are mature and there are schools they cannot go to.

But at the lower level, proprietors are taking advantage of the wananchi. They confuse them with so many things and can easily fall prey. In this ongoing closure, the primary sub-sector has been most affected.

At primary level since it is decentralized, the local governments have a big say in their functioning. I believe that it is not true that some of these illegal schools have been operating without the knowledge of local governments.

But some local government leaders in districts like Mukono also rejected the ministry’s directive to close their schools.

That strengthens my thinking that if they did not work with them [illegal schools] to operate in the first place, why then come and protect them? As I said, it is difficult for a school to operate in a local government without its knowledge. A school is not something you can hide under your bed. The children are coming in and out every day – and you don’t see them?

So, are local governments to blame for the existence of illegal schools?

I don’t want to engage into that blame game. But I think we need to know that the process [of licensing] begins from there. Of course there are issues around the decentralization policy and some people tend to think everything is supposed to only be handled at that level [of local government].

This ongoing closure should be looked at as wakeup call because some time back, we did a similar exercise; so, people thought it cannot be done again.

Recently, parliament put a halt to the school closure exercise. Are you taking on its recommendations?

That is the reason why we went to parliament to meet MPs sitting on the education committee. [Note: Education officials appeared before the education committee on March 21 over the closure of schools].

We explained to them why we were closing and to me, they seemed to understand us but they also indicated that they would be going to the field … soon and come up with a report. Of course, we have to oblige when parliament wants to do its oversight role. We have decided to suspend the closing exercise and wait for their findings. 

For schools that are already closed, are they going to open?

My understanding is that they [MPs] were not telling us to re-open illegal schools but just to halt the process. So, those schools will remain closed.

What are the challenges you have encountered in closing the schools for the last two and a half months?

The closing exercise is affecting so many people the wrong way. For instance, if you close a school with about 200 learners, these are so many families and other people are thinking about their jobs. But it is saddening that many people are also politicizing this process.

Amidst the politics around the exercise, we indicated in parliament that there is no right time to close a school because a school programme runs every year. For us, we are comforted in the knowledge that we gave people ample time and our doors are open to ensure that those who put in place the minimum standards get licenses and are later registered.

If really proprietors of closed schools were concerned, you would have found people waiting to be attended to at the reception. We also have no appeal backlogs for closed schools at all our regional offices.

For the future, what are you doing to ensure high education standards?

On our part, we are going to strengthen our vigilance on illegal schools. We are also working towards making the directorate of Education Standards a semi-autonomous body as provided for in NDP II, the NRM manifesto and the ongoing restricting in the ministry.

This will give us more leverage to enforce standards. As of now, because we are part of the [education] ministry, the enforcement mandate is not provided for.

nangonzi@observer.ug