A gentle drizzle beats an insistent rhythm on the rusty, corrugated iron classroom roof at Katwe primary school in a suburb of Kampala, Uganda’s capital.
It is a chilly morning and children in the primary one class are learning the alphabet. “A, B, C,” they repeat after their teacher. But many of these children will not finish their seven years of primary education.
Irene Namusuubo Guloba, the headteacher, says: “Around 250 of our pupils did not come back this year. We cannot tell exactly where they went.” This exodus of pupils is not unusual here – some transfer to other schools, but others drop out completely, Guloba says.
Katwe primary is one of the government schools implementing the Universal Primary Education (UPE) scheme.
When the initiative started in 1997, as part of a national policy to provide free primary education for underprivileged children, it was a dream come true for most poor parents in the east African state. Wealthier parents take their children to private schools.
In record time, numbers in UPE schools soared. Enrolment increased from 3.1 million pupils in 1996 to 8.4 million in 2013.
The numbers are evenly spread between boys and girls. And the country has been commended for achieving more than 90% of MDG2, which aimed to ensure that all children – boys and girls alike – complete primary school.
But this success seems to be falling apart amid a very high number of dropoutsand poor-quality schooling for some of those who complete primary school.
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) has estimatedthat 68% of children in Uganda who enrol in primary school are likely to drop out before finishing the prescribed seven years.
Chad has the highest dropout rate in sub-Saharan Africa, at 72%. In east Africa, Kenya has the highest completion rateof 84%.
At a cabinet ministers’ retreat last month, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni expressed his rage over the rate at which pupils were leaving school, even when the country spent 900bn Ugandan shillings ($302m; $201m) annually on the scheme. He said: “We should get an answer, and if you think it [UPE] needs to be restructured, we do that.”
The scheme faces a myriad of issues: gender challenges, child labour, early marriages, less motivated teachers, and lack of awareness among parents. However, the biggest challenge is poverty.
Dr Nicholas Itaaga, a UPE expert and a lecturer at Makerere University’s School of Education, says poorer parents still struggle to meet requirements for school. “UPE was a good development for any government to implement. Our problem inUganda [is that] it was not adequately planned. We are losing out.”
The major setback for UPE is that it is not entirely free, contrary to the general perception that parents are not supposed to pay for anything.
In practice they still have to buy scholastic materials including pens, exercise books, clothing and even bricks for classroom construction. They also have to provide or buy lunch for their children. For poorer parents, especially in rural Uganda, who live on about $1 a day, the cost is beyond reach.
Charles Mugerwa is the father of an 11-year-old boy in Kasenyi village, Kalangala district, in central Uganda. On a school day, his son is at home. Asked why, Mugerwa said: “He has no uniform.”
The poorer regions – northern and eastern Uganda – experience higher dropout rates. Western and central regions are regarded as better off.
Government figures indicate poverty levels have declined in Uganda, from 24.5% in 2009-10 to 19.7% in 20012-13.
“Do not expect a pupil who comes to school and there is no hope for a lunch[time] meal to stay in school,” Guloba says.
Some schools now ask parents to pay between $2 and $5 a pupil for every three-month term so that they can prepare lunch for them. But some parents still cannot afford to pay, and their children end up dropping out.
