LET MAKERERE INCREASE FEES

Once again, government has blocked Makerere University from implementing fees increments, proposed following expert advice. Earlier, the Minister for Higher Education cited CHOGM, explaining that government is unlikely to support fees increments before the event. Then, in his letter directing the university not to increase fees, he queries the manner in which the decision to increase fees was reached (The New vision, 9th June, 2007).

Ulterior Fears

The Minister betrays an ulterior fear of the proposed increments or, at the least, a condoning of Makerere’s under funding. To start off, one wonders how CHOGM can be cited against increasing fees for privately sponsored students. Secondly, in querying the finance committee’s capacity to increase fees, the Minister ignores article 42 (2) of the Universities and Other Tertiary Institutions Act, which provides for this capacity. Thirdly, while article 40 (b) of the act states that the council shall…fix scales of fees, the Minister is at pains to distinguish between the fixing of scales of fees and the raising of fees, forgetting that raising is also fixing. Fourthly, the minister forgets that the university is not under obligation to delay its decisions until the president has studied visitation reports.

Understanding the refusal of fees rises

The truth is that government fears for the affordability of the increased fees, and likely student action. Nonetheless, we should accept that quality comes with costs and that, as long as we aspire to it, the question of whether to increase fees is irrelevant and decisions to increase fees must be implemented without delay. Rather, attention should be on whether, and how, students can afford increased fees, to which I now turn.

Irony of Makerere Fees

As to whether students can afford increasing fees has already been answered. In a 2004 study, for instance, I found that 80% of the schools that qualified over 70% of the students admitted to Makerere in the 2003/2004 academic year were charging higher fees than those levied in the university’s most populated school and faculties—Education, Arts, Science and Social Sciences—which is corroborated by the McGregor committee. Yet, ironically, there are fears that increasing Makerere’s fees will prohibit access.

Affording the increased fees

No doubt, increased fees could be beyond the means of some students and attract student resistance. Nonetheless, this resistance would be consequent upon inability to pay, and perceived unsuitability, of the increments. Hence, government should focus, not on resisting the proposed increments per se, but on ensuring that they are reasonable and that ways through which they can be met are devised, which could be done through:

Streamlining Resources Utilisation

Crucial to the perceived suitability of fees increments, is the efficiency with which resources are utilised. So far, the McGregor committee has reported resources mismanagement. On top of bringing the motivation for increasing fees to question, this could create an illusion that big increments are necessitated when, in fact, they are not. If the proposed increments are necessitated to procure teaching resources rather than feed the university’s 66 indefensible allowances, and which government can determine, therefore, they should be implemented.

Revision of Government Sponsorship

After increasing fees in line with costs, a means of ensuring their affordability is the extension of governmental funding to their subsidisation, rather than restricting it to a select few. With the cost incurred by each student reduced thus, many would afford a realistically priced university education. These are the policy issues on which Makerere cannot decide, and which government should direct; not the raising of fees as the Minister suggests.

Deferred payment

Underlying the fear that increased fees are likely to be unaffordable is the appropriation of the cost of students’ education to a few payers (government and parents). A way out, therefore, is the shifting of the cost to the students, thorough the institution of loan schemes, which could ensure that each payer incurs but a small fraction of the big cost. The dynamics of operating these schemes may best be worked out by financial institutions that are cognisant of pertinent variables. In many settings where these schemes are operational, however, their institution is capitalised by government, social security funds and similar organisations, meaning that, even here, government has a role to play.

Ban on Student Caning? What a Joke

The Ministry of Education finally came out to illegalise the canning of students, apparently consequent upon the beatings in Katikamu and Arua that went sour as was reported in the press. It interesting to note, however, that this is just another of many such directives from the same ministry and that like all the previous, the latest will not work as I will illustrate shortly. Firstly, however, I will critique the incident that alarmed the Ministry of Education to re-illegalise student canning.

Students are Cunning

I did not take the story in which five students were reportedly beaten by three teachers into comma seriously until the Ministry of Education based itself on it to re-state its directive against caning. I took it for granted that everyone readily discerned that it was a tale of a comedy. I have since learnt better, which is why I will draw an analogy between that and a similar story albeit the later ended differently.

For two years, a classmate of mine convinced our teachers that even half the stroke of a cane on him was enough to throw him into comma and teachers who were weak at learning (or remembering) his vulnerability were often sent into panic because he readily collapsed into comma as soon as a rod was tried on him. On one such occasion, he was so badly in comma that as soon as he was admitted at a nearby hospital, Sister Headmistress contacted the father who, on arrival, called the boy — who was on drip — to life. And when they returned to school, the father demonstrated — at an impromptu school assembly — that the boy can be clobbered beyond limits the school had ever considered reaching. This marked the end of the commas even though he succumbed to thorough caning thereafter. What a shame that a whole Ministry of Education believed that three teachers, probably consulting among themselves, flogged students into comma one by one until the fifth!

Caning Popular; Teachers at Crossroads

The Ministry of Education specifies the don’ts without specifying the dos so teachers are at crossroads. For starters, we in the classrooms are mostly dealing with kids and adolescents. They demand more freedom than is reasonably acceptable; would like to disobey authority; and can be incredibly irrational. So what do you do? When you reprimand them, they laugh it off. For many students, suspension from class — to go home or dig up anthills in the school farm — is a God sent break from dreaded lessons. Besides, suspensions mean missed lessons so you are sure to register failures. Ironically, the Ministry turns its eyes away from this reality and bans caning without specifying equally effective alternatives.

Interestingly, many head teachers and parents, including legislators and officers of the Ministry of Education, appreciate Proverbs 13:24. Subsequently, at many staff and parents’ meetings, teachers receive orders to “beat them” from the horse’s mouth. So what do you do when you are at obligation to produce results so as to keep your job? Of course consider that caning ensures compliance whilst saving lesson time and effecting a positive ripple effect — until some students convince journalists that it has thrown them into commas albeit cunningly.

Ill Considered Bandwagon

It is quite apparent that anti-caning advocacy is subsequent upon a wave of child rights activism that is seemingly followed with little consideration for our own context. What it is to be punished, for example, is largely a sociological construct that children acquire as they socialise with seniors starting with their parents. And because many of the parents trust the rod, when children are handed over to teachers, they don’t feel punished until the cane has been administered. That is precisely why I am yet to believe that our students can attain the grades their parents, school authorities and they themselves want to see when we withdraw the threat of the rod. I, however, know graduates who are now glad that their teachers caned them.

Educational Planning: Principles, Tools and Applications in the Developing World

AUTHOR: J. C. S. Musaazi
ISBN: 9970-05-022-2
PUBLISHER: Makerere University Press
AVAILABLE AT: East African Institute of Higher Education Studies and Development

Makerere University

Review by Jude Ssempebwa

Hailing from the hands of the renowned author of ‘The theory and practice of educational administration’, ‘Educational Planning: Principles, Tools and Applications in the Developing World’ is a masterpiece that brings together the breadth and depth of planning in a uniquely simple and captivating style. Treating planning from the viewpoint of developing world education, it explores a wide range of issues, stretching from education through politics to development, which it analyses, whilst drawing lessons for the developing from the developed world, within a standardised paradigm. Pertinent theoretical aspects of planning as well as micro and macro planning models are discussed and a laudable attempt is made on defining a generic model. Above all, it is prescriptive, so readers will not only learn planning and why it is often erratic; they will learn how to plan, in educational and other settings, at all levels. Lastly, its futuristic orientation ensures that the reader is brought to the leading edge of planning and challenged and capacitated to ask and respond to questions pertaining to the future of planning.

Making a case for Coaching

Open letter to the Minister of Education and Inspector General of Police

Honourable Minister and IGP,

Recent media reports indicate that a number of teachers, including a head teacher, have been interdicted over coaching. Indeed, cases, and threats, against coaching have been so numerous in the media that one is tempted to think of the practice as unconditionally bad. Unfortunately, most editorials on the practice are not sufficiently cognisant of the cogency of the circumstances that have necessitated it. This, therefore, is to write in defence so that it will be clear, especially to the sceptics, that coaching is a contemporary educational need — especially at such a time when students’ holidays are here and it is time for coaching.

Bad Law

My initial thoughts are that your anti-coaching attitude is consequent upon the law, criminalising the practice, which is unfortunate because the law is bad— for, contrary to the basic qualities of good laws, it is not necessary, comprehensively definitive, just and, consequently, (effectively) enforceable as I will illustrate shortly.

Coaching is the giving of students extra teaching. This is why I am yet to be convinced on the necessity of a law, and policemen hours, against it. Moreover there are various school typologies: day, boarding, evening, weekend etc. I dare you to draw a line between teaching and extra teaching. In many boarding schools there are night lessons (extras); similarly, well-heeled parents, including officers of your departments, hire teachers to offer extra lessons to their children in the privacy of their homes and the law is quiet. Where then is justice in the same law when it criminalises the act of a day school calling in its students for holiday lessons and that of students choosing to see a teacher at such a time and place that they find appropriate, often with the informed support of the parents?

That coaching is bad is a famed but, unfortunately, rhetorical allegation. In fact, it may be argued that it is good because it: 1) increases guided-study time 2) allows more student-centred instruction, which is dwindling in the institutionalised classroom and 3) accesses many learners the teaching of upscale teachers, including UNEB setters and markers, they otherwise could not have accessed. I am, therefore, afraid that the anti-coaching law is based on myths rather than truths.

Myths and Truth about Coaching

Coaching makes teachers reluctant to teach well in the main stream classes. Irrespective of the true worth of this allegation, even education management novices discern that it suffices to set nonnegotiable performance targets for the teachers.

Coaching gives some students an unfair advantage. So be it, the way some students have text books that others do not have. In education, coaching — at home or otherwise — is a synonym of going the proverbial extra mile, a point on which we ought to be agreed.

Coaching is characteristically spoon-feeding. This is not as problematic as we are being caused to believe, especially because we are not clear on the gap between teaching and spoon feeding and which of the two the schools themselves are doing and with what results. We are, however, clear that whether we teach or coach, it is the same syllabus hence, the end justifies the means.

Products of coaching fail to cope with higher education. Substantiating this necessitates statistics on higher education failure rates that incriminate coaching. Otherwise, having been coaching since nursery did not keep me from earning a good degree.

Coachers are extortionists. One wonders what is wrong with a teacher offering to give (optional) extra lessons to a few students during the holidays at a fee. If it is okay for us to pay to talk to doctors, why not pay to talk to teachers?

Coaching deprives learners rest. Whereas it is agreeable that learners need a break off school work, themselves and their parents are the best judges of when to take this break. You may realise that while you can try to bar teachers from coaching, you cannot stop students who choose to spend the entire evening or holiday buried in their books.

Implicating the system

That coaching is a necessary condition for exhausting the ever widening syllabi is a truism. It is my prayer, therefore, that you either encourage the practice (and possibly allow for registration of coachers in accordance with relevant laws) or introduce a system in which teaching is clearly distinguished from extra teaching and the later is not a condition for success.

Economy to Blame for Graduate Unemployment in Uganda

University training is under attack for producing job seekers rather than creators. Beyond the rhetoric, however, an important question is one of whether university training, rather than the economy, is to blame for the graduate unemployment problem. This is what motivated a recent study, by the author, ‘Factors influencing graduate employability in Uganda’, which undertook to respond to the following, among other, questions: what is the incidence of graduate unemployment in Uganda? Is graduate unemployment in Uganda, if existent, consequent upon mismatch between university training and labour market demands? What are the factors influencing graduate self-employment in Uganda? The findings of the study exonerate university training whilst implicating the economy.

High Levels of Graduate Employment

Firstly, 85% of the graduates were employed and 88% of these had achieved employment within one year of graduation. This disputes a high incidence of graduate unemployment here and is corroborated by evidence from other scholarly efforts like Kirumira (2003) (Where has all the education gone in Uganda?)

Sociology; not university training

An interesting finding, however, was that 50% of these had achieved their first employment placement through a personal contact or were working in a family owned company. This suggests that 50% of the available employment opportunities are rationed ‘sociologically’, meaning that, on account of lack of ‘well-placed’ labour market contacts, some graduates will find it particularly difficult to get into formal employment irrespective of the university training they received.

Jobs Not Enough

Under the auspices of higher education liberalisation, and as a spontaneous response to contemporary demographic trends, the number of graduates turned out in Uganda has expanded exponentially over the last twenty years. The high level of graduate employment noted above not withstanding, it was the opinion of the respondents that employment opportunities have not expanded proportionately. Since, according to the strategic plan for higher education, the vision of higher education here rests not only in the provision of quality higher education but also in making it accessible to all qualifying Ugandans, the desirable condition is that universities enrol all qualifying applicants and the onus is on the economy to absorb the graduates, by way of employment, which it has not done.

Question of Science Education

That science based higher education is of higher employability value in Uganda is a famed, and of late, popular policy position. Nonetheless, the study found no significant discrepancies between the employment situation of humanities and science graduates. Evidence was generated, however, that some science graduates are in placements that are supposedly humanities based, meaning that the economy has not evolved an incentive system that encourages students to specialise in the sciences, despite a much heralded commitment to science education.

Rural-Urban Discrepancies

Critics argue that, owing to their elitist training, graduates decline rural employment openings. Nonetheless, none of the graduates had ever declined rural employment. Several of the graduates in the urban areas, however, explained that these areas offer more hopes of employment and many rural stationed jobs are, all the same, offered at organisational headquarters in Kampala. In the sobering words of Bishop, however, as long as we tax rural enterprises to build social infrastructure, not in rural areas but in towns, a young man who leaves school and goes to a rural area ought to have his head [sic] examined, which exonerates university training whilst implicating development planning.

Lack of capital; not training

Graduate self-employment was generally non-existent--94% of the graduates were not engaged in any form of self-employment. However, all the graduates refuted the claim that they are not self-employed because they lack training in the necessary entrepreneurial skills. Instead, 90% of them cited lack of capital. Prioritisation of formal sector employment was also found to underlie the absence of graduate self-employment, albeit superficially. Sociological factors have tended to restrict jobs to the more affluent graduates that would normally have or access the capital necessitated to be self-employed, leaving those who are least capable of self-employment unemployed yet they are blamed for failing to take up self-employment. Paid employment, on the other hand, is the choice destination for graduates because available options for self-employment, and the ones most employment policy persons and commentators point to, are mostly ‘survivalist’ and don’t keep up with paid employment--in terms of returns, work environment and professional and social development. This is why most of the few graduates who were self-employed looked at their self-employment as stopgap.

Policy Implications

More than anything else, efforts to alleviate graduate unemployment must focus on formal sector employment opportunity creation; not calling university training names. Attention must also be put on increasing the practicability and profitability of graduate self-employment. Graduates should neither be encouraged nor expected to take up ‘survivalist’ self-employment because returns to it characteristically fail to be within range with those to formal sector employment for which they supposedly qualify. It may be important to realise that where graduate self-employment has been significant, the Newly Industrialised Countries for example, this has arisen more out of an enabling macro-economic environment than out of university training. Rather than ask what university training has not done, therefore, policy discussions should focus on why loans, mortgage and leasing have not worked for recent graduates. Lastly, there is no point in being quiet about the absence of subsidies in favour of graduate self-employment if policy makers are genuinely concerned to enhance graduate self-employment.

After USE, Whither Science Education in Uganda? Open Letter to the Minister of Education

Honourable Minister,

The Challenge before Us

Uganda’s education-related economic development challenge is its persistent failure to breakthrough in science. Graduate unemployment, now a daunting problem, has also been extensively blamed (by President Museveni among other education and employment policy persons) on students’ specialisation in labour-market ‘non-marketable’ study programmes namely, humanities. Subsequently, government has explicitly discouraged specialisation in humanities-biased education.

The cause for concern

Nonetheless, while releasing the results from last year’s A-level examinations recently, UNEB announced that science subjects remain the worst done as was the case for O-level. UNEB secretary, Matthew Bukenya, cited laboratory apparatus inadequacies—a survey carried out during the examination period revealed that 48.4% of the centres either had no laboratory or only a poorly equipped room.

Policy Contradictions

This is not surprising. From day one, it was apparent that improving pedagogical support, rather than mandatory study of science subjects and virtual restriction of government sponsorship to science-based higher education programmes is the way forward. That the cost of offering science subjects is way above that of offering arts, yet most educational institutions must struggle to be ‘profitable’, is another overt policy contradiction in a country that is committed to promoting science education. Taxation of (already under funded) institutions only exacerbates this contradiction. The implementation of USE also raises concerns for science education. To start off, only the downscale schools, which characteristically suffer pronounced apparatus inadequacies, are participating and grants have been reduced to 29,420 and 47,000 per government-aided and private school student respectively. This is why the future of science education is even more uncertain.

Way Forward

Ordinarily, it is not possible to train scientists at shillings 47,000. Since we must cut our coat according to our cloth, however, allow me to draw your attention to some much ignored ways through which the teaching and learning of science subjects may be enhanced under the same, or minimally expanded, budget constraint.

Subsidisation of science apparatus: now that we have to teach science subjects under a budget so stringent, the irony of taxing science equipment and private schools must stop. Instead, the duo should be subsidised--like other sectors of the economy whose development is critical to personal and national development.

Optimal utilisation of apparatus: often, teaching resources constraints arise more out of poor management than inadequacy. Hence, a way forward for the effective teaching of science subjects lies in the elimination of underutilisation of available apparatus. This necessitates that: apparatus utilisation is scheduled to achieve space and time optimality, through matching laboratory and class sizes and extending opening hours; the upscale schools are brought onboard USE and that relevant policy barriers are redressed to promote the sharing of their resources with the less endowed schools, since part, or all, of these resources remain idle for part of the work day/week--when, for instance, ‘50-student-seater’ laboratories are accommodated by 25 and when these are closed for sometime during the work week; and under utilisation consequent upon the rest/meal breaks associated with 8-hour-day school schedules is eliminated through session schooling. Moreover, secondary students here seldom study for all the time they are in school.

Optimal utilisation of available teachers: at the current lesson load floor of 20, many teachers teach for two days a week, since most schools offer 10 lesson-periods daily. Effective teaching amidst USE necessitates that these teachers take on more lessons, so that they serve more students without addressing large classes at ago. Group and peer teaching and evaluation might make this more practicable.

Creative creation of apparatus: there are bound to be very limited funds towards the purchase of laboratory apparatus. Rather than sit back and lament the likely inadequacies, however, teachers should creatively utilise the available resources and local environment to create some of the necessary teaching aids. For instance, cessation of the buying of distilled water need not result into shortages because distillation is part of the secondary school syllabus. Similarly, the rats necessitated for anatomy may be supplied by the school wildlife club, free of charge. A wide collection of insects, birds, animals, skins, plants, rocks, bones, implements etcetera for laboratory use can also be stocked, not through purchase, but student collection. The laboratory technicians, who are often as underutilised as their laboratories, could help with the preservation, classification and dissemination of these specimens. Your leadership would be pivotal to the success of this alternative since relevant stakeholders, including teacher trainers, have to be brought onboard.

Construction of public laboratories: in the circumstances, the luxury of constructing laboratories inside the secluded premises of schools is unfeasible, because ‘private’ laboratories are, for a number of reasons, usually under facilitated and utilised. The way forward, therefore, is to construct public laboratories, where different (neighbouring) schools can book sessions. The merits associated with this are that the laboratories are likely to be well equipped, since one big investment is undertaken in lieu of various small ones; all students, including those from the less advantaged schools, would access laboratory facilities; and the laboratories would be put to more optimal use since they would register higher time and space utilisation rates than the ‘private’ school laboratories.

Conclusion

As you have emphatically pointed out, to sceptics, both USE and science education are possible; nonetheless, their attainment necessitates much more than reaffirmation of government’s commitment and the conventional; it necessitates innovative approaches that are responsive to the radically changed education task environment.