Teacher Utilisation Studies Volume ii: A Draft Report on Secondary Schools

Abstract

CHAPTER ONE: Background and Introduction 1.0 Background: The Government of Uganda attaches great importance to the development of education. It has a policy of increasing every Ugandan's accessibility to quality and relevant education. Through the Ministry of Education and Sports (MOES), Government embarked on implementation of the Universal Primary Education (UPE) Programme in 1997. Under the programme, Government pays school fees for up to 4 children per family. The immediate effect of the UPE was a drastic increase in the rate of enrolment of children at the primary school level. The sudden growth in number of primary school children crated enormous pressure on government educational resources which called for a corresponding increase in the number of primary school teachers and other infrustructural facilities. Government further envisaged that the same effect would soon be felt at the secondary education level thereby aggravating the situation. Under Uganda's education system, the central government determines district teacher establishments. Within a district recruitment of both primary and secondary school teachers s done by the District Council through the District Services Committee. However, deployment of teachers within a school is the responsibility of the head teacher. Due to budgetary constraints experienced by Government, it could not increase the number of teachers as demanded by the situation created by the UPE. Instead, Government considered improving the efficiency of those teachers already in employment, through better deployment and utilisation. Government already had some evidence and was concerned, that head teachers do not always place teachers appropriately, for instance in terms of subject specialisation and training. In light of the above and some other considerations, Government conceived the idea of a study of teacher deployment and utilisation in primary and secondary schools in Uganda whose findings would guide subsequent Government intervention. This report contains the study findings and other relevant information. 1.1 Commission of Study: Through the Ministry of Education and Sports the Government of Uganda commissioned a Consortium of Consultants, IMPACT Associates and Monarch Consulting Inc; to undertake a nation-wide study on Teacher Deployment and Utilisation in government-aided primary and secondary schools. 1.1.1 Report Structure Volume II of the report of the Teacher Utilisation Studies covers the findings on Secondary Schools in Uganda. This report does not contain much of the methodological issues and TORS since they are well handled in Volume I. 1.2 Scope and Location of School Covered by the Study Like at the Primary school level, for purposes of this study, the Secondary Schools were sampled according to the locational categorisation. As detailed in Chart 1.1 below. The majority of the secondary schools (55%) surveyed, were located in the Rural accessible areas while about 44% were in the urban and only 1% were in the rural remote areas.