Gov’t Report Calls for Scrapping of Janet’s Ministry, Outlines What Museveni Must Do to Make Education Work for Everyone

In a voluminous report stretching 242 pages, a committee of eminent educationists and senior citizens (put together by Minister Janet Museveni) has recommended disbandment and alteration of the Education Ministry the way we know it today.

Chaired by ex-Education Minister Rtd Colonel Nuwe Amanya Mushega, the Education Policy Review Commission (EPRC) was established in May 2021 (via Legal Notice no. 5 of 2021) to inquire into the current state of education sector in Uganda and advise on reforms that ought to be urgently undertaken to make things better.

Their report is finally out and one of the many reforms being proposed is the overhauling and change of name of the Education Ministry itself from MoES to Ministry of Education, Sports and Training (MoEST). This broadened mandate is meant to enable the Ministry offer more effective leadership of the education sector which has been evolving since before even the advent of colonial rule in Uganda.

Members included Dr. Joseph Muvawala (Vice Chairperson), Prof John David Kabasa, Hon John Mwoono Nasasira, Monica Abenakyo Monge, Irene Nanfuka Rusoke, Dr. Prosperous Nankindu Kavuma, Dr. Yusuf Khalid Kibuuka Nsubuga, Clarence Olangamuri, Dr. Kedrace Turyagyenda, Dr. Jacklyn Arinaitwe Makaaru, Brighton Barugahare and Prisca Boonabantu as Secretary.

Their report, from which the GoU will have to produce a Cabinet White Paper highlighting reforms that are affordable and acceptable to be implemented, also recommends scrapping of National Council for Higher Education, Directorate of Educational Standards and the TVET Council and merge all their mandates under a more unified body called National Education Standards & Quality Assurance (NESQA).

They also want the Local Government Act amended to re-centralize the inspection of schools’ function from the districts back to the center in Kampala. They also want the governance role of state increased in grant-aided schools which may be founded and owned by faith-based organizations like churches, the Islamic faith etc. For instance, the Chairperson for the School Management Committees in primary schools and the BoGs for secondary should be a government representative. That the role of the church, as the foundation body, ought to be re-defined to deepen the involvement of both parents and government in the governance of the schools and decision-making.

They are proposing that up to P4, all learners be instructed in their mother language with English being taught to them as one of the subjects. In otherwords, all the subjects should be taught in mother tongue with exception of the English language itself. Then from P5 onwards, English becomes the language of instruction for such learners.

That going forward, every learner should learn and become fluent in at least three languages namely English, Kiswahili which is the 2nd official language and another which has to be that child’s mother language. This has to be a Ugandan language. The national ID and NIN number should be used more through the school system as an identifier tool for every learner.

When it comes to education financing, the Mushega Commission recommends that 7% of Uganda’s GDP is invested in education/sports and annually 20% of the national budget. That the identified gaps in our education system will only be effectively addressed if funding of education is significantly improved.

That the basic education (which has been re-defined) should take up to 70% of that public investment in education (50% on primary & 20% on secondary), 14% on TVET, 10% on tertiary education and the remaining 6% on others. Parents are also called upon to become more involved in funding and general running of the education system. It’s recommended that, going forward, similar education review processes be undertaken every 10 years.

The Mushega Education Review Commission is the 2nd one in Museveni’s 40 years in power, preceded by the Prof Senteza-Kajubi one which raged 1989-1992. That doing such reviews more often is helpful because it enables the country to keep re-aligning its education system to suit the rapidly-changing world.

Elsewhere, the report calls for establishment of a national sports tribunal to handle all manner of disputes in the sub sector. All teachers ought to be trained in special needs education aspects among other reforms aimed at strengthening teacher education and make the teaching profession more attractive. Teachers’ salary too should become tax-exempt to make the job more attractive.

The education ministry should continue playing the leading role in the training of medical and dental personnel as the one of Health handles trainees’ internship and deployment aspects. The report also recommends that those things of having the category called provisionally-licensed Universities should end and instead require private Universities’ investors to meet all the minimum requirements at their commencement. It also demands more financial and operation independence or autonomy for all public Universities.

The loan scheme should be strengthened and re-aligned to benefit Uganda’s financially-most vulnerable students who will never have a chance under the merit-based system. All teachers and instructors in TVET institutions must strictly be industry practitioners to ensure that specific industry skilling needs are effectively addressed.

The report also calls for establishment of the Teachers Council to exclusively handle the registration, licensing and accreditation of all teachers in Uganda. This is something akin to what the Law Council does for Lawyers etc. The idea is to have the teaching profession become better regulated as is the case with auditors, accountants, lawyers, aviation workers, medics, surveyors etc.

ON BASIC EDUCATION: Rather controversially, the report recommends amending the Education Act 2008 and other relevant laws to make a parent’s failure to enroll their child in school an offence punishable by a jail term, fines or both.

All school-age-going children should be in school or else their parents get punished for their indolence. The GoU policy of having a primary school per parish should be reviewed and be made more pragmatic.

The feeding of all children or learners at school must be shouldered by government closely working with parents to make the school learning environment attractive because this is the only way to tame high dropout cases so that learners complete their full education cycle or chain.

That the PDM should be leveraged to increase community-level agricultural production so that all the school food can be produced from the community where the school is located. This directly boosts the economy and adds meaning to the PDM objectives as community members’ agricultural produce is assured of ready market. Children can’t keep in school and effectively learn on an empty stomach. It’s the reason they keep dropping out as opposed to completing the entire cycle.

Under the report, basic education is re-defined to cover a total of 11 years namely 1 year for nursery/pre-primary, 6 years for the primary cycle and another 4 years for the O’level. That PLE be abolished so that in those 11 years, learners only undergo school-based continuous assessment as they prepare for their pioneer national examinations’ sitting which should only happen after S4 or O’level.

The subsequent 2 years should be dedicated for A’level and another 3 for tertiary. Education at all levels should have both the academic and technical/practical aspects to balance good grades with the relevant skilling.

The pre-primary must become compulsory for all learners (aged 5-6 years) and its only after nursery education that one gets eligible to join P1 for the primary journey to commence. The report recommends policy reversals so that the government gets fully involved in funding and investing in pre-primary education as opposed to leaving the same for the private sector.

The Kajubi report of 1992 is the one government relied upon to abandon pre-primary to be exclusively spearheaded by the private sector. The Mushega report says this was a mistake because pre-primary is too important to be exclusively left for the private sector.

Beyond merely investing, the report calls for increased regulation of nursery education by the state to ensure that care and education givers at that level are adequately trained formally and that there are uniform standards. There is statistics showing that a lot of care givers at that level aren’t formally trained!

The report also recommends that children under nursery section and lower primary (P4 and below) shouldn’t be in the boarding section to allow them adequate time to live and bond with their parents at home-plus the learning of their mother tongue or language. Should this recommendation be accepted by the government, children will only be permitted in boarding section from P5 onwards and not below as is the case today.

SCHOOLING HOURS: In what will excite many stakeholders who have already been doing some advocacy around the same issue, the Mushega report recommends change in instructional hours, reporting time and how long learners stay at school. That, as opposed to the current setting whereby learners stay for 8 hours (8am-4pm), the same should be shortened. Four hours (8am-12pm) for nursery, 7 hours (8am-3pm) for P1-P7 and 8 hours (8am-4pm) for secondary level learners.

The Mushega-led panel of experts (whose recommendations Janet has since welcomed as game-changing) clearly register their contempt for and dispute the current education teaching system which is putting emphasis on passing exams and acquisition of good grades in national examinations by UNEB, whose disbandment is equally recommended in the report. That more emphasis should be put on character formation, skilling and employability of the learners upon leaving or completing their formal schooling or training.