Over whelming Teacher – Pupil ratio

Over whelming Teacher – Pupil ratio 

Uganda as a country introduced Universal Primary Education (UPE) in 1997 by a political commitment by His Excellence President Museveni as a main policy tool for achieving poverty reduction by providing facilities & resources to enable every child to enter and remain in school until the primary cycle of education is complete; making education equitable in order to eliminate disparities & inequalities; ensuring that education is affordable by the majority of Ugandans & reducing poverty by equipping every individual with basic skills.
Under the UPE Program, the government of Uganda abolished all tuition fees. Following its introduction, gross enrollment in Primary school increased from 3.1 million in 1996 to 7.6 million in 2003. This is despite the fact that Primary Education was not made compulsory or entirely free since parents were still expected to contribute Pens, Exercise books, clothing/Uniforms, Breakfast, Lunch, & even bricks & labor for classroom construction through community work. However, the government realized that parents were not willing to contribute large amounts of bricks & labor because of many other demands on their time.


Achievements:

• The UPE Program in Uganda demonstrates that a poor country with committed government & donor support can fight poverty through ensuring Universal access to education for its citizens. The significant increase in primary school enrollment is also an indication that the payment of school fees was a big impediment to accessing education, especially for poor families.
• The government has partly provided cash for construction of more classrooms, paying of more teachers & purchase of the requisite scholastic materials especially Text books.

Challenges:

• The massive increase in pupil numbers created a problem of classroom space although the government has embarked on a drive to build more classrooms.
• Over whelming Teacher to Pupil ratio (55:1 50:1 52:1) and Pupil to Desk (3:1 8:1); as major contributors to poor performance i.e. shortage of teachers for a teacher to handle 300pupils at a time for 8hours.  Imagine UPE Program was introduced, but little was done to improve on the working conditions of teachers in these schools. As a result, teachers are faced with different forms of stressors like workloads, overcrowded classrooms & late salary payments. As a way of reaction to these stressors teachers develop burnout, causing loss of moral & low job satisfaction which leads to poor performance.
• Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) set exams according to a set national curriculum. Schools that fail to complete the curriculum due to Teacher to Pupil interruptions are usually disadvantaged because they will have to sit for the same exams as those who are able to complete the curriculum. Pupils are not given opportunities to study & prepare for exams in time, no home works, extra work, monthly tests, and lesson exercises given.

Therefore, imagine one teacher to a class of 300pupils; to teach Mathematics, Science, English, & Social Studies from morning 8:30am till evening 4:30pm Monday to Friday. Look at the teacher’s workload (classroom control, marked exercise books, lessons taught etc). No attention is given to slow especially OVC/PHAs thus leads them not to learn how to READ & WRITE.