Education for All-End of Decade Assessment 2015

Abstract

Uganda is one of the countries that embraced the EFA movement in 1990 and continues to uphold its ideals. Since 2000 Uganda has expanded access to primary education by 27.7% (male 23.1%, female 32.6%). This has raised the Net Enrolment Rate (NER) at primary level to 96.0% (male 95.6%, female 96.4%). The rapid increase witnessed in primary education enrolment was as a result of the adoption of Universal Primary Education in 1997. UPE remains Uganda’s flagship program and has for the past 15 years consistently received over 55% of the total annual discretionary budget allocated to the Education and Sports Sector. The resultant expansion in enrolment at this level has helped Uganda achieve gender parity by 2005. With regard to secondary education Uganda adopted Universal Secondary Education program in 2007 targeted at the marginalized and poor households located in the rural and peri-urban areas. This initiative has helped increase enrolment at this level by 136%. This program has also significantly improved the proportion of girls participating at this level of education which now stands at 46.6%.

As a consequence of sustained expansion of access to both primary and lower secondary Uganda’s literacy rate for the general population has significantly improved to 74.6% (male 82.4%, female 66.8%). Indeed the improvement in the literacy rates for the youth aged 15 – 24 years is significantly higher and now stands at 83.3% (male 89.1% female 85.5%). This clearly demonstrates the impact of education in the country. Based on current trends, Uganda has already met Goal 4 and is on track to achieving Goals 2, 3 (particularly increased (particularly equitable access to basic education and secondary education), and 5 (particularly gender parity at primary level); however, the country is unlikely to achieve Goals 1, and 6 by the 2015 target year. Progress on Goal 1 has been particularly slow because the provision of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is mainly Private Sector – driven. However, the private sector is driven by other motives particularly the need to earn profit. Consequently, the current development of ECEC is become skewed towards urban and peri-urban centre’s where there is demand for ECEC. The result is that over 70% of these Centers are concentrated in these areas. This implies that the rural population (which accounts for 75% of the total population) will remain under-served well into the Post 2015 era. While the country has done tremendously well in expanding access for both boys and girls (Goal 2) it will only partially achieve Goal 3 (increased access to primary and secondary) the remaining aspects of Goal 3 (i.e. equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills) remains a big challenge. Partial progress has been made in Goal 5 especially in eliminating gender disparity in primary enrolment (and to a large extent in lower secondary education). However, achieving equitable participation in quality basic education (which also contributes to xx Goal 6), as well as achieving Goal 6 is perhaps the single biggest challenge facing Uganda’s education system. Despite consistent policy action and investment in basic education substantial barriers still persist in ensuring equity equitable participation in quality basic education. Some of these barriers include rampant poverty, negative cultural practices (e.g. early marriages, HIV/AIDS etc.) and high opportunity costs for education (especially for disadvantaged and marginalized groups). Despite these challenges Uganda will continue to prioritize equitable access to quality basic education in the medium term. To this end Uganda remains committed to Global, Regional and National initiatives intended to accelerate progress towards EFA targets. This will no doubt call for even closer collaboration with multilateral, bilateral, regional and national development partners including the private sector in order to leverage on badly needed additional resources for the realization of our acceleration plan. In this regard we are currently in advanced stages in negotiating funds from Global Partnership in Education (GPE) required to support us address the urgent challenge of providing equitable quality basic education. The country has also crafted a National Strategy for improving proficiency levels in both literacy and numeracy which will be the main stay of our acceleration plan. It is now twelve years since September 2000 when the International community and the United Nations agreed on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to promote sustainable development in developing countries. In the Education and Sports Sector specifically only two MDG goals are being implemented and these are (i) Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education and Goal 3: Promotion of equality and women empowerment. Based on the current status Uganda has partially met Goal 2 (Universal Primary Education). Under this goal, NER is on track while the proportion of pupils starting P1 who reached P.5 and Primary 7 completion rates are unlikely to be met. Since 2000 Uganda has been tracking the progress made towards the attainment of Goal 2 through mainly three indicators that is Net Enrolment Ratio (NER), proportion of pupils starting P.1 who reached P.5 and primary completion rate. NER: Over the last decade, Uganda has registered massive increase in the number of pupils enrolling for primary education. The 2010 Annual School Census indicated that a total of 8,374,648 (male 4,179,248; female 4,195,400) pupils were enrolled in primary schools as compared to 6,559,013 pupils (male 3,395,554; female 3,163,459) in 2000. This translates into a percentage enrolment increase of 27.7% (male 23.1%; female 32.6%). Proportion of pupils starting P.1 who reached P.5: As a result, the implementation of the UPE programme and Quality Enhancement Initiatives, the size of the cohorts of pupils that enroll in P.1 and successively reach P.5 has massively increased. Out of 1,712,420 (male 859,343; female 853,077) pupils who started P.1 in 2005, 60.9% (male 60.0%; female 61.8%) successively reached grade five in 2009 as compared to 54.1% in 2008. In 2010, the survival rate was 60% (male 60%; female 61%). Results show that more females successfully survived to grade five as compared to males. However, the target of 100 percent survival rate to grade five is not likely to be met by 2015 given the current gap of 40% (male 40%; female 39%). xxi Primary completion rates: Completion rates for primary education remain below the desired target of 100 percent. Uganda’s primary completion rates stagnated between 2006 and 2008. In 2009, only 52% of the children of official graduation age completed primary seven. Since then, the completion rate has been improving steadily. In 2010, the completion rate improved by 2 percentage points from 52% in 2009 to 54% (56% male; 51% female) in 2010. Based on studies conducted in Uganda and elsewhere in the world, enhancement of financial support to ECD would result into improved completion rate and, perhaps, meeting the desired 100 percent target by 2019.