2.3        Key statistics by sub sector (2004)

Table1a. Enrolment, teachers & schools numbers

Table1a continued

Please Note: N/A stands for data not available.

          Going by numbers presented in table 1 a, it is easy to see that government has more presence in primary schools compared to other sub-sectors. Where as this is in line with the UPE policy, there is need to prepare other sub-sectors in terms of increased teachers, schools (classrooms), textbooks, etc for them to absorb UPE products after 2004 and the years to follow.

o        Dropouts.

Dropouts is one of the major challenges of the UPE program which if not well handled can affect completion rates. However, despite all the numerous government interventions, the number of dropouts has persistently increased (though slight) from 297,529 in 2000 to 343,204 in 2003 showing an increment of 15% in the total number of dropouts. In addition, despite all the efforts, the rate of dropouts of 4.5% and 8% for primary and secondary respectively, is still high and needs to be reduced if high completion rates are to be realised in the next 10 years. (For further details about dropout rates for the period 2000 – 2004, refer to table 1b).

o        Repeaters.

Despite the presence of the policy of “Automatic Promotion”, repetition is still rampant in schools at annual rate of 13% and this leads to wastage in terms of resources.  For the last 5 years, the repetition rates have been ranging from 11% to 13% with the highest recording in year 2004. (For further details about repetition rates for the period 2000 – 2004, refer to table 1b).

2.4          Public Education sector Finances.

As part of Governments’ commitment to provide free education to all, UPE capitation funding has consistently increased from Ushs 26bn in FY 1997/98 to 25,634,162,000 as of March 2005 for the FY 2004/2005.

2.4.1        UPE Capitation Grants

Table 2 below shows funds government has committed to UPE since 1997.

Table 2. UPE Releases (Cash Transfers)

Source:  Education planning department (MoES)

2.4.2             Education Sector Budget for 2004/05

Table 3.  Budget for 2003/04. (In billions)

Table 3 shows development and recurrent expenditure estimates for education sub-sectors. Recurrent expenditure is much more than development expenditure. 

Regarding actual public recurrent expenditure Ushs 285.72 bn was spent on primary education. This was ……..%) of the GDP and 61.9% of total recurrent expenditure on public education. Ushs 91.79 bn was spent on secondary schools and was ………% of GDP. Both secondary and tertiary education accounted for 36% of total recurrent expenditure.

This chapter discusses in detail all the education sub-sectors. Where possible trends over the period 2000-2004 are presented and discussed. For each sub-sector considered are:

·         Enrolment by gender

·         Teachers (gender and qualifications)

·         Classrooms

3.1          Primary level education

3.1.1          Primary School Response Rate

The response rate for 2004 school census was 71% for Govt-aided primary schools, 16% for Private/Community schools with 87% overall response. The enrolment in Govt-aided primary schools for 2004 was 6,707,845, while that for all primary schools was 7,377,292 with 13% of the schools not reporting.

Care should be taken in extrapolating the enrolment to the full 100% schools because:

·         Enrolment per school in Govt-aided schools tends to be higher than in private (the UPE factor). This means that even though 13% of the schools, mainly private schools, did not report the actual missing enrolment is probably around 11%, and not 13%.

·         Efforts have been made to clean the EMIS database by identifying closed and duplicated schools that might still be in the system. This is a continuous exercise that has just begun and to-date with the ongoing school mapping exercise the school registry is further being validated.

3.1.2        Number of Primary schools

Table 4. Primary Schools Numbers

Through construction work using the Schools Facilities Grant scheme plus pursuit of the policy of extending grant aid to deserving community/private schools, government has steadily increased its share of primary schools to 78% in 2003 and a slight reduction to 72% in 2004..

Most primary schools were founded by the religious communities (36% by COU, 32% by Catholics, 7% by Moslems) with the Government founding only 3.4% of all primary schools. About 81% of all primary schools are rural-based, 6% urban based and 12% in peri-urban areas with 85% of all schools fully registered with an additional 5% operating under licence. Out of the total number of primary schools, 94% are day schools while 99% are co-educational, all in line with Government policy.

3.1.3          Pupil Enrolment

Over the years (2000–2004) there was a steady increase in enrolment in all primary schools i.e. 6,559,013 in 2000, 6,900,916 in 2001, 7,354,153 in 2002, 7,633,314 in 2003 and 7,377,292 in 2004. However, the proportion of enrolment in government-aided primary schools steadily rose from 82% of all enrolments in primary schools in 2000, 86% in 2001, 89% in 2002, 90% in 2003 and 91% in 2004. This trend was a result of Government’s policy to build more schools and to a small extent offer grant aid to previously community/private schools. Figure 3,shows that the rates of enrolment increase in Govt-aided schools is more than that of overall enrolment in all primary schools.

Figure 3.          Rate of increase in enrolments in all primary schools compared to Govt-aided primary schools

The gender imbalance in 2000 for Government aided primary schools was 52% boys against 48% girls. This improved to 51:49 in 2001, and remained unchanged for the years 2002 and 2003. A similar imbalance is reflected in private and community schools.

Figure 4.        Enrolment by grade and gender

Considering enrolment by grade, the bulk of pupils are in the lower classes especially primary one. Between Primary one and primary two a  very big drop of 642,800 pupils was observed. The gradual drop down in enrolment from lower to higher classes is an indication that there is a significant number of pupils who are not promoted to the next class before completing primary seven. However, for all classes there isn’t a significant difference between number of boy and girls.

3.1.4          Under Age Pupils.

Due to a small number of pre-schools, a sizeable number of children get enrolled in primary 1 before they’re of official school - going age. Because of their tender age and immaturity both mentally and otherwise, under-age pupils are forced to repeat.

3.1.5          Pupils with enough seating space

The percentage of pupils with adequate seating space is much lower in lower classes compared to higher classes. Because of inadequate classroom conditions in the lower classes, some pupils are left with no other option but to sit down on the floor.

Figure 5. Ratio of pupils with enough seating space

3.1.6          Primary Teachers in all schools

Table 5 is a break down of primary level schoolteachers according to gender and grade. Overall, there was an increase in the number of people joining the teaching profession i.e. an additional 16,672 teachers in 2001, 12,446 teachers in 2002, 6,103 teachers in 2003 and a further 1,704 teachers in the year 2004. Over the three years the percentage of male teachers was 64%, 64% and 69% in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 respectively. The percentage of Grade III teachers dropped from 64% in 2000, to 63% in 2001 and 62% in 2002. Licensed teachers have taken up the drop in percentage share of professionally qualified teachers.

Table 5. Primary teachers by qualification gender and grade (all schools)

At Least Grade IV:  Includes All Graduate, Diploma, Grade V, And Grade IV. Others: Include all grade II teachers and others recorded as Not Stated

3.1.7          Primary Teachers in Government Schools

There were 125,875 teachers in Government aided schools at the time of the schools census in April 2004 and by October 2004, the number of teachers accessing Government payrolls had reached 125,883.

3.2          Secondary level education

3.2.1          Secondary Schools Response Rate

Though Govt-aided secondary schools represent only 22% of all secondary schools, enrolment in Govt-aided secondary schools is 53% of total enrolment i.e. 370,807 students out of a total of 697,507 students. The response rates for 2004 were: Government-aided 97%, Non-Government-aided 42% and 54% overall for all secondary schools.

Over the period 2000 to 2004 the secondary education sector has been characterized by lower response rates to the annual school census at levels of 88% in 2000, 77% in 2001, 79% in 2002, 71% in 2003 and 54% in 2004 largely attributable to difficulties in getting private schools to submit their statistical returns, largely due to lack of interest by respondents (headteachers). It’s also possible that some schools were forced to close due to natural causes resulting into low number of schools. As of 2004, a total of around 126 secondary schools had closed. If we take into account these closures, the secondary schools’ response rate for 2004 would rise from 79% to 83%.

3.2.2          Secondary School Numbers

Government-aided secondary schools are roughly one third of all secondary schools, though they take up nearly 50% of all secondary enrolment.

Table 6 Secondary Schools Numbers

Government founded schools were only 4% of the total secondary schools, and the rest were founded by religious communities (Catholic 18%, COU 19% and Moslems 5%), parents at 17% and entrepreneurs at 28%. Over one half of all secondary schools are in rural areas (54%) with 69% of all schools fully registered with an additional 15% licensed but not registered. Statistics further show that 56% of all schools were day schools, while 92% of all schools were co-educational with 5% for girls only and 2% for boys only.

3.2.3          Enrolment in secondary schools

There has been a steady increase in secondary schools enrolment, both in Government aided schools and in all schools.

Table 7: Enrolment in Secondary Schools

3.2.4          Pupils with enough seating space.

3.2.5          Unlike primary sector, the percentage of students with adequate seating space in secondary schools is much bigger in lower classes compared to higher classes and this rhymes with enrolment patterns

3.2.6          Secondary Teachers

Table 8: Secondary Schools Teachers, all schools

Key – Others includes cases of Grades II, III, IV, and Not Stated.

3.3          Pre-Primary Schools

3.3.1          School Ownership And Registry Status

Out of 1,630 pre-schools in the schools registry, only 538(33%) pre-primary schools responded to annual schools census throughout Uganda in 2004, with relatively low Government  (36.2%) participation. About 48% of these pre-primary schools were not licensed nor registered, and only 23% were fully registered and 24% were licensed.

3.3.2          Enrolment in Pre-primary schools

During 2004 there were 41,775 pupils (20,596 boys and 21,179 girls) in Pre-Primary schools. This was a reduction of 35% on the enrolment for 2003. Of these pupils, 2,080 (4%) were aged 2 years or less while 16,399 (31%) were aged 6 years and above. Using the provisional Y2002 population of 24.7 million and the Household Survey 2001 allocation of 10.8% for the 3 to 5 age group, we have 2.66 million children eligible to be in pre-primary with net enrolment ratio of 1.24%.

Table 9: Key statistics for All Pre-Primary Schools

3.3.3           Pre-primary school Teachers

In 2004 there were 2,006 teachers in pre-primary schools, a decrease of 42% over 2003. The cause for this was due to low response rates of pre-primary schools.  A sizeable number of 7% had either a certificate or a diploma in nursery teaching with additional with additional 4% Grade II teachers, 16% Grade III teachers and 19% untrained teachers. This category includes licensed teachers. Out of the total number of teachers, 14% had a minimum qualification of a first degree.

3.4          Post-Primary Schools

Post-primary refers to institutions (excluding secondary schools) that can be accessed after primary 7 or senior 4. Categories of post-primary institutions include:

·         Primary teachers’ colleges

·         Technical institutes/schools

·         Commercial/business schools

·         Nursing and midwifery institutions

·         Clinical officers’ institutions

·         Hotel management, catering, and tourism schools

·         Fisheries training institutes

·         Vocational training institutes

·         Survey training schools

·         Physical planning training institutes

·         National meteorological training institutes

By 2004 there were a total of 1,003 post-primary institutions in the whole country. Total enrolment was 29,338 with 69% male students. Teachers were 1,923 a small share of female teachers (16%).

 Table 10: Key Indicators for Post-Primary Schools (2004)

Because of small enrolment levels, the

Pupil: teacher ratio was very low i.e. 15:1. The pupil: classroom ratio (51:1) on the other hand was slightly above the average.

3.5        Non-Formal

Non-Formal education is an alternative approach to basic education that does not follow the formal primary education system of formal classrooms and a set curriculum. There are three main approaches to Non-Formal education:

·         COPE – Complimentary Opportunities for Primary Education

·         BEUPA – Basic Education for the Urban Poor Areas, and

·         ABEK – Alternative Basic Education for the Karamoja area

Eighteen districts have participated in Non-Formal education with a total of 420 schools, with Moroto district leading with 110 schools and 7,625 pupils followed by Kotido with 79 schools but a higher enrolment of 21,707 pupils. These two districts in the Karamoja area account for 57% of the enrolment of 51,049 pupils.

There are 854 teachers with 210 of them in Moroto district, 162 in Kotido district, 119 in Mubende district and 115 in Kampala district. Thus the four districts account for 70% of the teachers. The average Pupil/Teacher ratio (PTR) is 60, with the highest PTR of 134 in Kotido and the lowest of 13 in Kitgum.

There were 195 classrooms in total, while three districts (kalangala, Kotido, and Sembabule) had no classrooms dedicated to Non-Formal education. They apparently teach their pupils from borrowed facilities. The average Pupil/Classroom ratio (PCR) is high at 262, but varying from extremely high at 1670 in Kotido to a very low of 22 in Luweero.

3.6        Tertiary

3.7          Tertiary  level education

3.7.1          Response Rates  of Tertiary Institutions

Though public tertiary institutions represent only 27% of all tertiary institutions, enrolment in public institutions schools is 48% of total enrolment. The response rates for 2004 were: Public institutions 97%, Non-private institutions 72% and 79% overall for all secondary schools.

Over the period 2000 to 2004 the tertiary education sector has been characterized by lower response rates to the annual school census at levels of 88% - 77% and 79% largely attributable to difficulties in getting private and public institutions to submit their statistical returns, largely the result of the lack of interest by respondents