Joint education provision : a relief or challenge to quality education services in Uganda : a study in Buganda region
Master thesis
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http://hdl.handle.net/11250/172029Utgivelsesdato
2013-08-15Metadata
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Sammendrag
The National constitution of Uganda clearly underscores the fact that education is a right of
every Ugandan. The same document also stipulates the role of the Government and other
stakeholders in providing education. It is from this mother document that also the other key
providers of education services derive their mandate. In Uganda providers of education are
either private or public. In some cases the government takes over the management and day
today running of some schools whose founder body is private. This is mostly for those
schools that are founded by the religious bodies. Hence coining of the term ‘government
aided’ schools.
Even in the previously entirely public owned schools, government has introduced cost
sharing as it cultivates the culture of having the parents too, share in the task of shouldering
some operational costs like lunch & scholastic materials for their children among others.
Hence the purely public school has quickly faded off the Ministry of Education vocabulary
and the government aided has come to be the key term embracing all schools with a
government attachment.
Grounded in the Ugandan education system’s practice of joint education service delivery,
without losing sight of the bulk of private education providers, this study sought to test
whether the quality of education delivered today is better, than what it would be if one
stakeholder provided the service. The study in general investigated the problems that affect
the Ugandan school system, reviewed government position in lower levels of academia, and
gave policy recommendations and suggestions of boosting school performance in light of
the current performance.
A low resource base is reported as one of the key problems that Ugandan schools still have
to grapple with. It in turn has accounted for substandard infrastructure, poor library systems,
inadequate teacher remunerations and appalling student housing problems in a number of
schools, among other challenges. The government stewardship through the Ministry of
Education was also found wanting in some aspects.
Increasing funding to the education sector was one of the recommended policy
interventions. Consultation of all stake holders even those in the private sector was highly
encouraged in order to foster unity and flatten the ground between different school
ownerships. This is projected to reduce the gap between private and public institutions and
build a more sound education system founded in performance & qualitative delivery as
opposed to institutional ownership.
The coverage of this study could have been wider, but time and monetary resources were
key hampering factors to a more exhaustive and comprehensive coverage. It is therefore my
strong recommendation that a corrective study ought to be done. This should raise more
palliative approaches to improving performance between public and private sector. The
government also needs to realise that Uganda is a developing country and education is a
priority that is highly needed to achieve and sustain development. They should therefore
control most of the educational institutions as opposed to leaving
majority of them in the hands of private institution owners. The government too needs to
improve it’s performance as regards the role of stewardship in it’s institutions. In as far as
achieving the objectives of the study are concerned, the study was largely success.