1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Education is a key factor to national development. In case of Uganda, it is the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) that is charged with the responsibility of providing high quality education in the country at the lowest affordable cost and accessible by all. Besides, the current education system has been structured to benefit all Ugandans with basic skills and attitudes to enable them exploit their surroundings for national and self-development in terms of health, nutrition, environment, politics, beliefs, etc.

The education structure currently includes the following sub-sectors:

· Pre-primary

· Primary

· Secondary

· Post primary / BTVET

· Tertiary

· Non-formal

The MoES being the overall coordinator, formulator, and implementer of education policies, attaches a big importance to availability of accurate, timely, and reliable information for informed decision-making, planning, monitoring, and evaluation of progress according to set goals and objectives. It is against that background that MoES conducts a school census every year to obtain and update information on all education sub-sectors, which it analyses and disseminates to all stakeholders. In addition, termly school registers have also been instituted to facilitate in frequent updates of pupil and teacher daily attendances, absentees and dropouts.

The key data collected (at school level) includes school particulars, enrolments, attendance and dropout rates, inter-school transfers (teachers and pupils/students), classrooms, instructional materials, income and expenditure.

In terms of data analysis, the data items above are stored in a format and structure that permit aggregating/disaggregating information at all the current administrative levels within Uganda’s decentralization policy framework i.e. national, district, county/municipal, sub-county/division, and parish/ward.

1.2 Purpose of the Fact Booklet

The main reason why the MoES annually conducts a school census is to update, analyse, and disseminate education sector information.

Being aware of the fact that information delayed is of very little value, and given the fact that a school census cycle (i.e. from the point school census data is collected to when it is fully processed and published) is a long one (approximately 10 months), with effect from 2000 MoES embarked on a dissemination strategy with three key publications i.e. a fact file, fact booklet, and a full abstract.

· Fact-file

The fact file is a two-page document summarising all the key information and is published as soon as school census data entry is completed.

· Fact-booklet

The fact booklet, small enough to fit in a pocket is published next and provides an in-depth analysis (including trends). Its main purpose is to communicate and explain to stakeholders, relationships and trend of events within the education sector.

· Full Abstract

On the other hand, a full abstract is published last and it is designed to furnish stakeholders with data/information for own analysis.

· Trend Analysis Report

· Just like the fact booklet, the trend analysis report gives an in-depth analysis of data from all variables captured in the questionnaire on a multi-year data approach Annual Report

This document is based on single year data cross-section covering all variables captured in the questionnaire.

2 EDUCATION IN UGANDA

2.1 Overview

The majority of literate Ugandans go through two basic levels of education i.e. primary and secondary schools and very few make progress to university and other tertiary institutions. For the period 1986-2004, enrolment in primary schools rose from 2,203,824 to 7,377,292 and 123,479 to 697,507 in secondary schools. Out of these students, some Ugandans had a chance to attain pre-primary (pre-school) education from 59,829(795 schools) in 2001 to 64,484 pupils in 2003(893 schools). However, due to low response rates in the annual school census 2004, only pupils were registered from 538 schools. The gap between primary and secondary school enrolments is very big, an indication that most Ugandans stop at primary level of education since very few join post-primary institutions. For example in 2004 only 32,047 were enrolled in post-primary institutions compared to 7,377,292 and 697,507 enrolled in primary and secondary schools respectively. Figure 2 shows that the gap widened much further when UPE was introduced in 1997. Given that UPE programme has been in place for eight (8) years, it is a big challenge for the government and other stakeholders to manage the UPE thrust for the beneficiaries to continue to secondary and post-primary institutions in 2004 and beyond.

Figure 2. Uganda’s pupil enrolment growth

(1980 - 2004).

2.2 Demographic Profile of Uganda

Population census in Uganda is once every ten (10) years. Since 1911 when Uganda started taking population census, population growth has been on the increase with the highest growth rate (3.4%) experienced over the last 10 years (1991-2002). Population figures (in millions) during 1948, 1959, 1969, 1980, 1991, and 2002 were 5m, 6.5m, 9.5m, 12.6m, 16.7m, and 24.7m respectively.

Figure 1. Uganda’s Population growth (1980 –2002)

2.3 Key statistics by sub sector (2004)

Table1a. Enrolment, teachers & schools numbers

(I) Enrolment	Male	Female	Total
1. All Pre Primary Enrolment	20,596	21,179	41,775
2. All Primary	3,732,928	3,644,364	7,377,292

3. Gov’t Primary
P1	836,924	828,090	1,665,014
P2	544,139	533,379	1,077,518
P3	525,853	516,929	1,042,782
P4	479,007	475,437	954,444
P5	424,830	423,072	847,902
P6	352,613	338,396	691,009
P7	233,716	195,460	429,176
TOTAL	3,397,082	3,310,763	6,707,845
4. All Secondary Enrolment	383,652	313,855	697,507
5. Govt Secondary Secondary’t Secondary	211,244	159,563	370,807
6. All Non Formal Enrolment	33,332	38,682	72,014
7. Post Primary Institutions PTCs	26,429	10,632	37,061
8. Students with special needs
Primary (All) Schools)	117,002	101,378	218,380
Government Primary	109,000	94,520	203,520
Secondary	5,737	5,156	10,893

Table1a continued

(II) Teachers	Male	Female	Total
Pre Primary
Primary-All schools	91,846	55,396	147,242
Primary-Gov’t schools	79,893	45,938	125,831
Secondary	29,074	8,239	37,313
(III) Classrooms	Total In Use	Completed	Under Constr-uction
Primary (Gov’t Schools)	87,514	81,217	35,528
Primary (All Schools)	103,135	95,742	40,280

(IV) Schools / Institutions	Gov’t or Gov’t Aided	Non-Gov’t	Total
Pre Primary	218	1,746	1,964
Primary	11,072	4,267	15,339
Secondary	784	2,861	3,645
Post Primary	103