Pupils wash hands: will UPE add value to them?  Photo courtesy

The February 18th 2011 Presidential and Parliamentary elections are now behind us. During the campaigns, all political party platforms weighed in on Education with myriad promises on how to revolutionalize the performance of especially Universal Primary Education (UPE). The common denominator of arguments gravitated around providing lunch for pupils, increasing teachers' salaries, building houses for teachers and constructing of more classrooms. Soothing proposals indeed, but do they provide a silver bullet for transforming UPE from the current quality deficit to an effective learning system? Since the inception of UPE in 1997, the government of Uganda continues to boast of impressive “big bang” enrolment rates from 3,068,625 pupils in 1996 to 8,297,000 pupils as of 2009. This in itself is obviously historic. But zooming deeper, one realizes that it is a case of history reaching a turning point, and failing to turn!

Uganda government has been largely elusive on the question of quality of UPE graduates! The World Bank and other development partners backed government's choice of “enrolment” indicator as measure of progress in UPE. This was even rewarded by the United Nations in 2010 as Uganda was ranked ahead of schedule in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGS) related to education access and gender parity. Nevertheless, UPE remains a contradiction in Uganda. We are witnessing quantitative progress, evidenced by increasing enrolment numbers of pupils into UPE schools, but a reverse and diminishing quality of UPE products! Perhaps the questions we need to ask are: Are Uganda's children better off as a result of surging enrolments? Or, is more schooling translating into increased learning?

A large scale citizen led national assessment of learning, conducted by Uwezo  (Uwezo means capability in Swahili) in 2010 under the auspices of the Uganda National NGO Forum and supported by Twaweza in 27 districts of Uganda reveals facts that should make our country not sit back and relax but rather use as reflections necessary to transform UPE. Overall 1,620 volunteers visited  16,200 households and administered a simple primary two test in Literacy and Maths to 34,752 children between the ages of 6- 16. The Facts: 9 out of 10 children among all primary three children sampled, could not read and understand a story text of primary two level difficulty and 8 out of 10 could not solve at least two numerical written division sums of primary two difficulty. Up to 85% of the schools visited at least had some instructional materials for Maths and English primary one to primary three, although only 38% of the schools visited were also found to have a library. Up to 67% of schools visited reported organizing “class days” however only 31% of the guardians/ parents visited the school over the past year to talk to teachers about their child's learning.

From the foregoing facts, some lessons and insights emerge:  Our children are attending school but are not learning.  Primary level 2 and 3 are the critical formative stages for children's learning- especially acquisition of cognitive and proficiency skills in numeracy and literacy.  Beyond this level, masterly of numeracy and literacy diminishes. Now we learn that at P3, only 2% can ably solve standard level two simple mathematics problems and read a story! The interest of parents in learning of their children is at 31%! Many parents, over 84% visit their children at school for other reasons but never ask teachers about their children's learning! It is important that parents get involved in their children learning.

What then is the problem? Besides government, even development partners, wider civil society and parents are all fixated on inputs like building classrooms when largely nothing is going on inside those classrooms. It’s appalling that 19% of teachers are likely not to be at the school and less than 20% are actually teaching (MFPED: PMAU Briefing paper 4). Instead of blaming teachers, we should seek to understand why teachers are not performing to capacity. Why is there low regard for teachers in this country? The solution can never be found in sidestepping and blaming teachers for the mess, but rather involving them to find enduring solutions to our education system.

To change the current UPE trajectory in Uganda, we must defixate ourselves out of focus on process inputs (building classrooms, houses for teachers etc) and build a mechanism that balances inputs and outputs in our education system. The best and viable intervention I have come across is placing incentives on outcomes delivery. For example, tagging incentives on teachers and schools that produce pupils at grade three level with over 80% passing literacy and numeracy tests (capability “Uwezo” tests) as a benchmark  pass mark level is classic. How it works: In such a system, payments are linked to achieved and verified outcomes. This will inherently mean that against all odds, schools and teachers will focus on getting many children to learn, in order to optimize payments from the incentive scheme. Nancy Birdsall and William Savedoff in the book, Cash On Delivery: A new approach to foreign aid; capture and elaborate this approach with distinction. This approach which accentuates results based incentives has potential for pushing forward the frontiers of education and effective learning in Uganda.

There is also need for greater involvement of parents in the schooling and learning system. Parents, teachers and local councils should enter into a social compact to tease out common responsibilities and placate a convergence of interests for the entire children's learning process. Such a social compact would increase vigilance, value for money and engender social accountability of all parties involved. It will also translate into increased community based articulation of issues that impact the performance of the UPE system.

Parents, teachers, government officials, religious leaders and the entire citizenry need to take a step back and start looking at the education system with different eyes and not simply advocate doing more of the same, as many politicians have done during elections. Rather we need to detach ourselves for a moment from traditional thinking and come up with new ideas and insights that may help our children learn.

I like the Chinese Confucius philosophy, 'everybody has to learn'. Learning creates a competent, curious and innovative human capital. This is where true and enduring change will come from. While presenting his thoughts at the Doha World Innovation Summit for Education in December 2010, Professor Jeffrey Sachs, stressed, "Without even a primary education, anybody is condemned to poverty in this world today." Primary education is not achieved by just schooling but by learning. Are our children learning?

By Morrison Rwakakamba.
The author mrwakakamba@twaweza.org is Uganda Country Program Manager, TWAWEZA.