Editorial: Raise standard of primary education to reap benefits

Looking at Primary Leaving Examinations results in recent years, including last week’s release, one cannot escape the conclusion that a pupil from a poor family is highly-likely to perform poorly in the examinations.

An analysis of the 2016 results shows that the best-performing schools tended to be private, which is where relatively well-to-do parents take their children.

Another indicator of performance is the urban versus rural divide, with the best-performing schools being in Kampala, Wakiso or municipalities across the country.

This is hardly surprising because the standard of living in urban areas is generally better than in rural areas. In addition, the level of appreciation of the benefits of education is higher in the urban areas.

Even with unemployment, quality education remains the easiest way to break the poverty cycle in a country like Uganda. But this can’t be achieved if the majority of our people who are poor and, therefore, need education the most are excluded. Bottlenecks that lead to such marginalisation must be addressed in order to reap the full benefits of education.

UPE has played its part in helping poor parents to take their children to school, but the quality of education provided in these schools continues to fall behind what their private counterparts are producing.

Most private primary schools pay their teachers less and are encumbered by heavy development expenditure, and of recent taxes, but they still manage to get their pupils to perform better than their UPE counterparts.

That calls for a fundamental shift in the way public schools are funded and managed so as to improve learning outcomes for all our children, not just a privileged few.

Teachers must be good and motivated. They must teach, and not just exist on the payroll. The necessary infrastructure must be in place, with an acceptable pupil-to-teacher ratio.

Learning aids such as textbooks and revision materials must not be a luxury. Last but not least, parents and guardians must take responsibility by seeing to it that their children do attend school. Providing lunch, and sanitary pads for the girls, are believed to be two of the enabling factors.