Will Education ministry’s capacity building drive turn around sector?

To improve learning outcomes, the Education ministry, through the Directorate of Education Standards (DES), launched a widespread capacity-building initiative in the financial year 2024/2025 for inspectors and District Education Officers across the country.

However, the initiative has found that writing inspection reports is still a major setback for inspectors, writes YUDAYA NANGONZI. During the ongoing nationwide training to improve school inspections through digital systems, many inspectors and District Education Officers (DEOs) are grappling with writing effective inspection reports.

This revelation emerged during a recent training session at Iganga Secondary School, where inspectors and DEOs were provided with practical skills to utilize the Integrated Inspection System (IIS) and interpret feedback from the School Performance Assessment (SPA) for enhanced school oversight and accountability.

Using the 2023 Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) results as a baseline, the DES started with officials from the 41 lowest-performing local governments and has since expanded to include 21 moderately performing districts in Northern and Eastern Uganda.

According to Frances Atima, the acting director of DES, weak report writing remains a significant gap in the inspection process.

“Most of our inspectors are former classroom teachers. They are used to descriptive narratives, but inspection reports require precision, evidence, and clear evaluative commentary,” Atima said.

“Without well-written reports, it becomes hard to track progress or make informed decisions.”

She emphasized the need for inspectors to prepare adequately before visiting schools, avoid personal bias towards schools, misinterpretation of government policies, and make practical recommendations tailored to each school.

“The command of language is also still problematic. You are not impressing anyone by using complex terminologies. If your report causes people to reach for a dictionary, then you know you are not communicating effectively in your report,” She said.

Atima noted that the new IIS system has introduced strict timelines to improve accountability. Inspectors must submit school reports within seven days of inspection or the system automatically deletes the draft.

End of term district reports are compiled over three months and contribute to the national inspection report.

ACCOUNTABILITY IN SCHOOLS

During the training, all teachers who attained a 100% clock-in rate on the Teacher Effectiveness and Learner Achievement (TELA) system were recognized.

The permanent secretary of the Education ministry, Dr Kedrace Turyagyenda, said the TELA system, which uses mobile devices with facial recognition to track teacher attendance and daily activity, has improved accountability in schools.

“We have provided schools with phones where each teacher in the morning must sign in physically using their face. After signing in, the phone displays a timetable for the teacher. The phone also has a provision for the head teacher, during the day, to go around and check the content being taught to the students,” Turyagyenda explained.

She added: “I know we can arise from the current shame that our children cannot read and write simple English texts to a state where any child in primary two can read and comprehend if they are well taught and inspected.”

Turyagyenda said that the TELA system also helps the districts to track the absenteeism of head teachers, teachers, and learners in schools. She urged inspectors to hold head teachers accountable and report any who fail to comply with systems like TELA.

Sarah Kwagala, the Iganga district inspector of schools, said that the transition to digital inspection has reduced paperwork and improved reporting efficiency. She, however, noted challenges such as poor internet connectivity and system glitches that can delay the submission of reports.

Kwagala and other inspectors urged the ministry to prioritize internal training and retooling to build inspectors’ confidence in using digital tools as well as provide them with vehicles to ease fieldwork activities.

Iganga district alone has 99 government and 300 private primary schools, 9 government-aided, and 25 private secondary schools with high school enrolments.