President Museveni promised to introduce Universal Secondary Education (USE) during the 2001 campaigns. His initial promise was that USE was to begin in 2003. However, it was promised again during the 2006 campaigns as he was facing his stiffest challenge from Dr Kizza Besigye for the second time. In 2007, “USE” began albeit without proper preparation by the government.

If one hears the term, they think, it is secondary education for all. This however, is a fallacy. Recently, I took time to interview staff and parents of Kigarama Secondary School in Bitereko Sub County, Mitooma District about USE. The findings are appalling.
Kigarama SS is a government-aided school implementing USE. It has 28 staff members comprising 18 teachers and 10 non-teaching staff.

None of the support staff is on the government payroll and only 9 of the 18 teaching staff members are on government payroll. The school, I was told, should ordinarily have a lab attendant, librarian, matron, nurse, messenger, security guards, cooks, store keeper and at least two secretaries. The school has 1 secretary, 1 storekeeper, 1 laboratory assistant and 1 librarian all of whom are paid by the parents.

What I found revealing is that the government disburses a paltry 41,000 on each USE student. Yet feeding alone, if a meal is estimated at Sh 1000 costs 65,000 in a term. There are 13 weeks in a term and each week comprises of 5 days which is 1000 multiplied by 5 times 13 which makes a sum of 65000. Both the teachers and parents revealed to me that government reimbursement is less than 10% of the school’s basic needs per term. In fact, some schools have withdrawn from USE and many others had applied for withdrawal but the government refused because the number of the applicants was enormous. While the government occasionally gives boom for laboratory equipment (which it only did last year worth 4m) – the school spends so much on laboratory equipment – 10 million at a minimum annually this is only when the school does fewer practicals otherwise the school spends Shs 15m annually.

As for the salaries, the school pays 3.2m monthly to staff members that are not on the government payroll. Since USE started in 2007, it is only in 2010 that the school got a textbook and laboratory equipment boom of 7m and 4m respectively. This raises a question as to whether or not this government works in the interest of the masses. This is a party which says is a mass party.

The non-USE schools are often granted huge sums of money from the government budgetary allocations. The reason given is that the people dividing the national cake are products of such topnotch schools. The solution to that should be for the down-trodden schools to demand for affirmative action in the allocation of jobs to their alumni. Shockingly, the school has less than five alumni positioned in influential government departments and most of those there are underdogs.

As for textbook, I was told that government gave textbook boom worth Sh 7million to the school only in 2010 yet the school spends 12 million annually on textbooks. The school also spends on sports – taking students for interschool matches, uniform, coaches, etc. Term one has sports gala while term two has athletics. The annual school vote for sports alone is Sh 4million.

In all the school, I was told spends 120,000/= on each student yet students pay Sh 70,000 and government remits only Shillings 41,000 per student. This means the school operates in losses. Schools being church-founded have to remit certain funds to the diocese – chaplaincy funds at 1000 per student, education fund at 2000 each student, church projects -1000 for the hospital and 1000 for the university project. It is vital to note that government owns very few schools as most schools are church-founded and are on church land and the church built structures. In fact, many church-founded schools applied to withdraw from USE but were denied because the applicants became too many.

What do stakeholders suggest?

The stakeholders suggest that government must employ more teachers; build libraries, laboratories, staff houses; recruit more support staff –librarians, security guards, lab attendants. They also suggest that the curriculum shouldn’t be book-centred but should reflect societal needs. They also suggest that the government should appoint school administration. Many Head Teachers and Deputies are in the acting capacity and they cannot give all to the school because like Nikita Krushchev said, “incentives are what get people work harder”.

Motivate workers by raising their pay and other fringe benefits such as medical insurance, housing allowances and prioritise career development through scholarships for upgrading and promote those who upgrade to encourage others.
Build classrooms to reduce congestion and provide hostel facilities to cater for students from a distance. Prioritise physical education for physical fitness and mental relaxation for the students; reintroduce civic education and political education in primary schools and secondary schools respectively to inculcate values of patriotism, democracy and human rights and fight ills such as corruption. It’s amazing that schools teach more about North America and too little about their motherland Uganda and Africa.

Improve sanitation by introducing water-harvesting systems – build tanks to forestall the fetching of water full of impurities from the valleys and encourage projects for community participation such as field work and burungi bwansi. This will help students mingle with the public hence stopping them from being hostile to the public.

Increase vocational schools. With technical schools even a person who leaves school with 9 throughout is capable of getting skills. Finally, while planning, stakeholders should be involved so that views flow from below and not be imposed from above. He who wears the shoe knows how it pinches. The schools should be allowed the latitude to draw budgets and government should fund budgets. Short of that, USE is destined to remain a pipedream.

Vincent Nuwagaba is a human rights defender
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