Dropping or kicked out?

Denne kronikken er skrevet av en studentene ved Masterstudiet i flerkulturell og internasjonal utdanning, Henry Mutebe. Kronikken går inn i Khronos serie om bistand og utdanning. Artikkelen er først trykket i Independent, Uganda, utgave for 24-30. juni 2016. (Side 1 og side 2).

«Som ledd i undervisningen på modulen Education and development in the global South ble studentene bedt om å skrive en avisartikkel som omhandlet et av temaene i modulen for å sende til en avis i hjemlandet. Dermed mente vi at undervisningen vil få et langt bredere nedslagsfelt enn kun studentene i Falbesgate. Denne artikkelen ble trykket over to sider og med fargebilder i den ugandiske avisa Independent. Artikkelen er et kritisk oppgjør med universal primary education (UPE) i hjemlandet, og slapp altså gjennom sensuren», skriver professor Anders Breidlid i et kort forord.

This year, the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) released the Primary Leaving Examinations. As you would expect, there were celebrations as the government authorities indicated that there had been an improvement from last year’s performance. Such statements often make headlines and burry the space for discussion on the thousands that fail and never make the headlines. According to the PLE results of 2015, out of the over 600,000 children who registered, a glaring 82,973 children failed completely and could not be graded. Another 85,071 passed in the last grade/fourth division. While we should celebrate the success, the number of children failing should open up a discussion on the health of the education system.

That over 80,000 children fail a national exam and there is visibly no concern or outrage about it speaks volumes. This problem is far more than a result. It is a loss, of all the resources we have invested in these children for the last seven years and more importantly, a potential human resource we may lose in the future.

According to the results, a total of about 621,401 candidates from 12,673 schools registered for PLE in 2015. Of this 478,585 (77%) were Universal Primary Education (UPE) beneficiaries. The results also showed that students from private schools performed better than students from UPE schools. Most worryingly, over 2000 schools in Eastern Uganda and thousands in the North did not register any students in first grade. The regional performance confirms earlier reports and research on poverty rates of the different regions which put the North and the East below others. This sort of economic inequality observed in these regions has started manifesting in PLE results. This situation is completely unsustainable and should make us uncomfortable and stimulate debate and further discussion on a number of issues in Education.

The differences in performance which collate with poverty indicators highlight the need to address issues of economic injustice that is prevalent in Uganda. Many children who come from poor families as the Global Monitoring Report of 2015 indicated, are more likely not to go to school than the children from wealthier households, and five times more likely not to complete primary school. In the long run, there is going to be structural generational poverty as some regions continue to progress while others lag behind.

Many schools are underfunded under the current capitation grant scheme where schools receive support according to number of children enrolled. Some schools in the North and East have fewer children because of issues of child labour, civil strife and poverty.

The schools may not have proper funding unless a different criteria is used to understand their needs. It is in such schools that parents cannot pay for lunch or uniform and as such children drop out of school. Therefore some of these schools have maintained lower numbers of children in school. There is need to reflect on the strategic needs of these schools and the children so that more funding is availed to them. Children from poor socio-economic backgrounds have extra needs and need special attention of government. To be able to provide quality equitable education, the government needs to map and appreciate the unique position of some regions, their context, special needs and design specific interventions to address those issues that perpetuate inequality in access to quality education. Most UPE schools are underfunded, poorly supervised and teachers not given adequate tools.

The other irony of the results though was that English was the best done Subject. However, in this ‘best done subject’, only 10% got a distinction, and 59.7% got a credit. Ideally, any student who did not get a credit will or may have probably had issues understanding the questions asked or even expressing himself or herself. It calls for further discussions on the question of the language of instruction in schools. If 82,973 children fail, it is not just a problem for those children or their parents but a national disaster. It serves to remind us of the need to ask ourselves why these thousands of children failed. In English subject alone, 9.9% of the children could not be graded. Interestingly this number had a close correlation with the overall number of children who failed and could not be graded (which was 13.8%) .

These statistics speak to the importance of the medium of instruction in schools, an issue which has received very little attention from stakeholders. Language is at the heart of learning and unless learners can use it properly, then there will be barriers to learning and thinking.

When results are released, authorities should interest themselves in investigating whether learners did not understand the task because of the language or they simply had limited knowledge of subject content. If the later were true, then we have to still find out why these learners had limited subject content. Was the planned or required material delivered? Are teachers proficient in English and have adequate subject content knowledge? How do we know they know? Do we conduct any assessments to evaluate the knowledge of our teachers on the subject content for their subject areas? We need to investigate the barriers to learning. We cannot afford to keep these numbers of children failing. It certainly cannot be these thousands.

As per the results, there is urgent need to discuss the issue of language, and more specifically, the specialized language found both in content areas and the academic Language used in teaching that content. In Uganda, English was adopted at independence as the official language despite the fact that only a minority of the population of Uganda are able to use it. From then on, it has come to be seen as the only alternative to bringing unity and acquiring knowledge and skills. Due to our relationship with our colonial masters and what goes with it, we have largely stuck to using this language despite the fact that children are failing every coming year. A lot of knowledge remains in English to the disadvantage of those who can understand it. Teachers are expected to switch from the local language in grade four. However, in practice, most teachers often start delivering subject content at a far earlier stage than is recommended and as such, learners progress to higher classes without mastering the language in which all subject content will be delivered. This means that for most learners, most discipline-specific vocabulary is too complicated for their age and in other subjects is introduced before they gain the ability to master it and or be able to use it. Most learners as a 2012 UWEZO report showed, had not mastered basic grammar and punctuation by Primary seven. The survey showed that by Primary Seven, 20% of pupils could not pass the Primary Two level test. Most of those who failed were from Uganda.

Despite that the fact there is sufficient research to suggest that it is especially challenging for students with limited exposure to that language outside of school to understand subject content delivered in an alien language, little effort has been put on discussing the issue of language and designing strategies to ensure that we reduce barriers to learning caused by the use of English as the medium of instruction in schools.

As Prof. Anders Breidlid observes in his research in many schools in Africa, teachers themselves are not any better in using the language. As such, many learners are receiving half of the information and cannot be possibly better than their teachers. Probably the government will need to design strategies to assess the competencies of the teachers through continuous assessments in their subject areas. How can children speak or write better than their teachers? The teaching of the academic language component, i.e vocabulary, grammar, syntax, style, etc. is no easy task and calls for a deep understanding of the language which very few teachers have mastered.

When the results are released, the focus has often been on who got aggregate four or was in the first grade? In our view, there should be equal focus on those who failed as well. The newspapers or media houses that set and shape public agenda ought to put a spot light on these number of children failing so that it comes to the attention of the public and arouses a discussion on the issues in education. The news is full of stories of the few that passed and forget the very numbers that should worry us. In a country where over 80,000 pupils fail a national examination, there should actually be no cause for celebration. We need to conduct a thorough examination of our system and ask ourselves why learners under performed. Was it a failure to master the specific content in the subject area, or are they failing language comprehension?  Did students fail science and Maths or students did not understand what was required of them in the test? If they did not understand the subject content? What was the cause? Did teachers cover the curriculum? Are supervisors doing their job? How do we know the teachers did their job?

In future, we may probably at a mid-level like primary four need a national examination to examine the subject knowledge content of pupils since material is delivered in the local language and compare with their performance at primary seven where subject content is delivered in the English language. Perhaps this will provide a better basis for further discussion on the importance of considering the use of local languages or code switching at a higher level than we are currently using. It is clear from the results that pupils are having issues understanding subject content because of the limited knowledge of the language in which subject content is delivered.

Throughout primary, most teachers have focused on the receptive language skills (e.g., listening, reading) than the productive language skills e.g., speaking, writing. The later would be useful in communities where students use the same language outside the classroom. As it is now, most pupils only find English in the classroom and that is where it ends. How can this ‘school language’ which is different from the community language be a channel in which students or learners are expected to think and communicate ideas, relationships that are beyond the classroom environment or what they have learnt, seen and observed both in and outside classroom?

Unless learners are proficient in the medium of instruction, it is dangerous to introduce other subject content in that language because it would mean that we are spending enormous resources on pupils who are not learning. On average, the government of Uganda spends 7000 Ug.shs annually per child in UPE. UNEB reports that 77% of all candidates were in UPE schools. So assuming we take the 77% of the number of those who failed, it comes to 63,889 pupils. This means that since 2009 when these children enrolled in primary one, the government has spent over three (3) trillion Uganda shillings (hundreds of thousands of US dollars) on educating them. It could be more since the government also spends money on providing infrastructure, roads and other social services in support of access to education for these children. As it turns out, it was all a waste and the grading of these children as failures/ungraded is going to have lasting impact on their esteem and standing in society.

That we lost over shs3 trillion in 7 years should make us reflect on how much we have to do to avoid future loses. Such is the magnitude of the problem of language. Over three trillion Uganda shillings may be the actual cost of failing to use a language which children understand and that can facilitate proper understanding. This year, another 82,973 children fail and will probably not continue, they will drop out. May be we need to refine our questions, are children dropping out of school, or schools are kicking children out?