{UAH} Fwd: No. 27341: Ugandan teachers: paid so little for so much -- Eastern Region

 

AfricaFiles

Title: Ugandan teachers: paid so little for so much
Author: Tumusiime K. Deo
Category: Eastern Region
Date: 9/20/2014
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African Charter Article# 17: Every individual shall have the right to education, cultural life, and the promotion and protection of values.

Summary & Comment: T.K. Deo examines why Ugandan teachers have historically been mistreated by the Ugandan government. While other public sectors have seen increases in funding, salaries for teachers remain below an acceptable level. Despite education being a foundational element for the Millennium Development Goals, Ugandan children are paying the price of a neglected educational sector.

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Introduction

The desire of any parent is for their children to have a prosperous future, usually defined by one's level of wealth that ultimately defines standard of life. The beginning block towards achieving this is to attain a good education. The quality of education that one experiences has a bearing later in one's life on the kind of acquaintances, and jobs they are able to vie for, as well as the benefits that accrue of them. The role of a teacher in this value chain, however discreet it may be, does not need to be emphasized. Therefore, a good education is pivotal in the fight against poverty both at individual, community and national levels. In fact, UNESCO has singled out Education as a major catalyst for human development, urging that rapid advances in education can help to achieve all of the MDGs (UNESCO, 2010).

Second-class citizens

Historically, teachers in Uganda, and notably at the primary school level, have long cried foul over poor pay. And while not being the only civil servants in a payment dilemma, teachers seem to be the worst hit by the deliberate or inadvertent virtual stratification of the Ugandan professional community. Teachers are perpetually seen as second- or perhaps third-class citizens, which, is plainly reflected in their remuneration. Interestingly, teachers' complaints over pay stretch all the way to university professors, notably from the country's oldest institution Makerere University. To compound the problem, one lecturer from Makerere University once lamented that the children he teaches are all thriving in different jobs while they (the lecturers) continue to graze meagerly on low pay. Some use this as a reason for throwing in the towel. One wonders how much more miserable the situation would be if primary teachers were to compare themselves with the professionals that have gone through their hands (New Vision Daily, 2012).

Despite this, teachers' contribution to the country overall, remains absolutely invaluable, for there can never be development without education. In an attempt to free themselves from this historical bind, teachers have launched occasional strikes over the years, with recent major national-level strikes taking place in 2011 and 2013. All have unfortunately been quashed by the government establishment under the pretext that there's no money. On each occasion, the teachers have been ordered back to class on pain of losing their jobs! Basing on E-mail interactions, officials from The Uganda National Teachers' Union (UNATU). say the Union has registered close to 50 cases of harassment and victimization of teachers involved in these industrial actions, by Resident District Commissioners (RDCs) and Chief Administration Officers (CAOs).

The teachers' demands in the 2011 strike were as follows:

• Provide a 100% salary increase;
• Swiftly operationalize the Public Service Negotiating and Disputes Settlement Act that allows Public Service Unions to formally negotiate with Government;
• Ensure payment of hard-to-reach teachers and science teachers' allowances;
• Ensure timely remittance of capitation grants; and
• Implement the teachers' scheme of service (promotional ladders)

Negotiations during the 2011 strike resulted in an agreement by which the government pledged to give teachers a 50% increment phased in over three years in the following manner: 15% in 2012/13; 20% in 2013/14; and 15% in 2014-15. The government honoured the salary increment of 15% in 2012/13, but the 20% increment for 2013/14 was not even budgeted for, thus fueling the 2013 industrial action. Since then the situation has remained dire as the teachers' salaries were already well below minimum acceptable living standards (Education International 2012).

In spite of the teachers' troubles, the government has notoriously been reported seeking supplementary funding in billions of shillings for other sectors, notably defence, the Electoral Commission, roads, and parliament, among others. In the 2014/15 Budget for example, while the Defence sector comfortably got allocated about a Trillion Shillings, the Education sector was allocated only 1.699 Billion amidst all its challenges. Without undermining the importance of such sectors, the continued availability of funding for them, and not the teachers, raises serious questions about the willingness of the government to address the teachers' plight. And without a doubt, it's this situation that has fueled the continued animosity of teachers against the government.

Can schools attract the brightest with poor pay?

Education is a complex field that deserves to be adequate addressed in order to achieve the ultimate goal. The United Nations at the turn of the Millennium came up with brilliant goals, among which was access to Universal Primary Education. However, in Uganda this has been remotely used as a political gimmick with little to show of the benefits of the education offered (Ritchie, 2012). As such, there is an important need for planners to examine education in a holistic manner; streaming from the quality of the school environment, such as good classrooms, provision of learning materials like text books, to obviously the quality of teachers. Unless the mismatch of these values is addressed, it becomes difficult for any school to attract the best candidates for teachers, in order to rip the most from the education they offer.

To address marginalization, we must help our children to learn and be beneficial to mother Uganda. To do this, we need to attract the crème de la crème to the teaching profession. One imagines that with the best kind of teachers, you can expect the best student performance-and not the thousands of failures we have witnessed in recent times. In my personal view, Ugandan teachers are not motivated enough to give their best, and with the situation as it stands it's nearly impossible to attract the best brains into the teaching profession as many bright youngsters would never want to risk their future. The few that join teaching simply do so as a last resort and with little commitment.

On average, a Ugandan primary teacher earns about Shs 300,000 per month (approximately 120 USD), a figure hopelessly insufficient for the ever-increasing cost of living in the country. What this means is that such teachers cannot afford a decent quality of life. Their situation is further worsened as even the little due to them sometimes is not remitted on time. Naturally, the teachers are forced to seek additional work in private schools (where they would prefer to send their own children), and as they get overstretched, their efficiency takes a downward turn. Others venture into businesses unrelated to the teaching profession, which still further affects their ability to deliver. Most can only hold up for so long before being tempted away from teaching by greener pastures or, in certain circumstances, diverting their professional talent on other things that would afford them a more decent life.

At the end of the day, folks that join teacher training colleges are generally those that have failed to get into programs that could later guarantee them more decent pay (Bindhe, 2014). Either they have no private sponsorship at the university or they did not secure adequate marks for a government sponsorship for the program of their choice. It can be argued that teaching for many is a last resort. Ultimately, we increasingly have disgruntled teachers only appearing in class to justify that small monthly pay, which in government schools is guaranteed. Delays in salaries are frequent (Bakalu, 2014).

But it helps to remain employed. Of course, this must in no way be interpreted as diminishing some of our gallant heroes who have offered their very best in the unwavering hope of their situation miraculously changing someday-it's on these that any glimmer of success is hinged.

Getting results?

Uganda may get credit for embracing the second Millennium Development Goal, having achieved Universal Primary Education-and indeed it has made progress in so far as offering free education is concerned. Statistics indicate that enrollment has increased from about 2.2 million children in 1997 to over 7 million today. Statistically, this is quite a significant shift, but numbers alone do not tell the whole story because the performance levels are so low. A 2012 report by the organization Uwezo suggests that only one out of 10 children in Primary 3 is able to comprehend Primary 2 level literacy and numeracy, an indication that children are merely passed from one class to another half-educated. The situation is no different at other levels (Uwezo, 2013).

The 2013 Primary Leaving Examination results indicated that 60,000 failures and at least 5,000 schools did not register a student in First Grade. These are 60,000 Ugandan children that have wasted away seven valuable years of their life in school and seen it all blown away like so much smoke!

The education minister should have launched an investigation to establish tangible solutions to the failure rates. It doesn't take consultants from the U.K. to identify the problem within the education system in Uganda. One cannot blame the teachers, because they could perform far better if they had the enabling environment, of which a living wage is a critical ingredient. I expected the Honourable Minister of Education Jessica Alupo for example to apologize to the nation or even resign upon being handed the 2013 Primary Leaving Exams (PLE) (Kagoba, 2012).

Perhaps what a more beneficial education must aim to achieve is to provide an all-round exposure that does not limit graduates to a single area of knowledge that could limit their involvement in the workplace.

Teachers are mis-proportionally blamed for the failings of their students. Yet they are hardly provided with the minimum environment to do their work. I have been to a few schools and seen teachers wearing worn-out shirts and torn jackets, with the soles of their shoes pointed in opposite directions. I have watched news of children in this day and age studying under trees or being taught while seated on bare dusty floor (Tumusiime, 2012). I have known teachers taking loans and living miserably while struggling to repay them. I have seen teachers who cannot afford to pay for their children in the very schools where they teach. I have seen teachers living in shacks and surviving on school posho (cooked maize) for a day's meal. One teacher I know of was working in a government school and was transferred from one district to another; she left her husband's nice home to start living in dilapidated staff quarters with a dirt floor, and yet she could not reject the transfer. With all this happening, the teaching profession becomes something very like a torture chamber. And with the situation like this, how many young and energetic Ugandans would want teaching as their profession of choice?

I undertook to find out from the Uganda National Teachers' Union (UNATU), the umbrella organization for teachers across the country, to establish just why teachers have perpetually remained underpaid. UNATU says, "Government insists that teachers are too many and therefore increasing their salary to acceptable levels would be unmanageable, and would also cause a demand for similar increments for civil servants in the same pay level e.g. Police and nurses. Teachers are many because of the increasing enrolment that is close to 10 million learners in UPE alone. In fact, there is a shortage of teachers because Teacher-Pupil Ratios are as high as 1:114 in some Districts. Of course, issues such as wage bill limits set as conditions for aid by IMF and World Bank also come into play" (personal correspondence, 2014). UNATU is happy though that the Collective Bargaining Act, one of the striking teachers' demands, has been partly implemented, with Public Service Unions in 2013 signing Recognition Agreements. UNATU is also officially part of the National Negotiation and Consultative Council and hopes that this is an important step towards finding a lasting remedy.

In my opinion, the biggest reason why Ugandan teachers are not giving their best to educate the children is well known and has been the same over the years: poor remuneration (Walubiri, 2012). It is far more challenging for a hungry teacher to impart knowledge to their students. For some, it may be easy to conclude that the 60,000 children that failed exams were stupid in the head, but that would be merely escapist and deeply insulting (Action Aid 2013).

Conclusion

In the post-2015 era, Uganda plans to feed into the UNESCO program on Education for Sustainable Development, which might certainly see some yet to be specified changes in the curriculum. In years gone by, emphasis was put on practical education where children learnt at an early stage to make things like mats, baskets, and pots, and to learn skills like tailoring, animal and crop husbandry, carpentry and so on. This approach helped to interest children in course directions that today are largely neglected.but in the process some of them earned a worthwhile living out of their efforts. The challenge with a purely academic education is that competition for the same kinds of jobs is extremely high, and so are the levels of frustrations. The advantage of practical skills development in education, on the other hand, is that the role of the teacher is significantly reduced as students are able to develop skills on their own or with the help of peers, which enhances innovation. With this in mind, home-schooling could be another option to explore as a way to reduce the amount of pressure on teachers whilst their pay remains an issue of contention. Possibly once the teaching environment in most schools has been significantly improved like the government has often promised, then parents can begin to somewhat sit back and expect the teachers to do their best in transforming their children (Wafula, 2014).

I suggest that government explores deliberate measures to address the situation of teachers' pay. Failure to affect redress could have long-term negative effects on development and prolong the problem of marginalization. The real catastrophe for the country will be children passing through school but gaining very little knowledge or ability to make a tangible contribution. This is a potential time bomb. The continued marginalization of teachers in Uganda is unjustifiable by any grain of imagination; it has severally been challenged and continues to be abhorred. As such, the sooner it's prioritized in national planning the better for Uganda.

Tumusiime K. Deo is a Ugandan writer and International Communications Consultant. He has authored and published many original articles, focusing on a wide range of society issues on the local, regional and international scenes. Deo has also offered communications consultancies in various African countries including South Africa, South Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia and The Gambia.

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References

Action Aid. 2013. Poorly paid teacher highly taxed!

Bakalu, B. 2014. Salary delays: teacher transfers deferred

Bindhe, E. 2014. Retired Tutor: PTCs Enrolling O-Level Failures

Education International. 2012. Uganda: Education unionists demand fair and decent salary

Kagoba, A. 2012. Access to quality primary education in rural societies of Uganda

New Vision Daily. 2012. Makere loses 50 lecturers

Personal correspondence with UNACTU, May 2014.

Ritchie, E. 2012. Is it goodbye to Universal Primary Education in Uganda?

Tumusiime, A. 2014. Kibaale School Pupils Forced to Study Under Trees

UNESCO. 2010. Education and the Millennium Development Goals

Uwezo. 2013. East Africa Learning Assessment Report

Wafula, E. 2014. President Museveni promises to ensure all teachers in Uganda are housed

Walubiri, M. 2012. Why paying teachers poorly endangers Uganda's future

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Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the AfricaFiles' editors and network members. They are included in our material as a reflection of a diversity of views and a variety of issues. Material written specifically for AfricaFiles may be edited for length, clarity or inaccuracies.

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