Education and Social Services in Kampala 2018 Outlook

PUBLISHED — 31st, January 2018

 

PRESS RELEASE (January 31st 2018)

EDUCATION AND SOCIAL SERVICES IN KAMPALA CITY

2018 OUTLOOK

 

KCCA continues to improve the quality of education in the City working closely with all the education partners and well-wishers. In the FY 2016/17 and the first half of FY 2017/18, we improved the learning environment of our UPE schools. Infrastructure being the first pillar in the Education Master Plan, we have continued to improve the functionality of school infrastructure through renovation of existing infrastructure as well as construction of new facilities.

 

In particular with funding of UGX 2.6 Bn from G.O.U, we have refurbished 14 classrooms at Kisaasi Primary School, renovated 7 classrooms at Kyaggwe Road P/S, made an emergency renovation of 6 classrooms at East Kololo P/S which were destroyed in a storm, provided 308 desks, installed lighting conductors in 7 schools, completed a 4 unit staff house at Kansanga Seed Secondary. School and completed the first phase for the construction of 9 classroom storied block at Kansanga Seed Secondary School. We also paid over 1.4 Bn to secure land on which Kalinabiri Primary School sits and continued to engage controlling authorities to process titles for school land and to sign M.O.Us with KCCA to guarantee the continued existence of the UPE schools.

 

 

In addition, with support from partners such as MTN Uganda, NSSF, Vivo Energy, Toyota Uganda, the Indian Women’s Association, Association of Hardware Dealers, Water Aid /AEE, Cheshire Services Uganda, InterAid, UPDF, DFCU, Living World Assembly Church and many others, we have renovated and or repainted over 41 classrooms in schools like Buganda Road Primary School, Nakivubo Settlement P/School, Bukoto Muslim P/S, Lubiri P/S, Kasubi C.O.U Primary School, Bbiina Islamic Primary School and Railway Children Primary School.

 

We have also constructed over 156 new toilet stances in schools such as Kisaasi P/S, Kasubi C.O.U P/S, Kitebi P/S, St. Lawrence Kigoowa P/S, Murchison Bay P/S, Ntinda P/S, Kiswa P/S among others. We also provided additional 100 desks to Railway Children P/S with support from Vivo Energy, provided 51 computers to schools with support from MTN Uganda and Cheshire Services Uganda and installed 60 energy saving cook stoves in 15 primary schools with support from Shimoshi Uganda and the Uganda Carbon Bureau.

 

Under the second pillar of our strategic outlook; of enhanced curriculum delivery, we have continued to do well in national examinations. Kampala has maintained top performance in PLE in comparison to other Districts, and we continue to work with our schools to post an even better performance. There was a general improvement in performance in PLE in 2017 in comparison to 2016. We registered 29,194 candidates with a gender distribution of 13,404(45.9%) boys and 15,790(55.1%) girls. The overall 28,031(95.8%) candidates passed out of 29,194 candidates. This was an improvement of 1% from 2016 where 27,827 (94.8%) candidates passed out of 29,340 who sat. The overall performance of Kampala at 95.8% pass was better than the national average pass rate of 90.9%.

 

Out of the 29,194 candidates, 8,420 were from the 79 UPE schools, which represented 29% of the total candidature. In total 8,033 candidates passed out of 8,420 candidates from the UPE schools giving an overall pass rate of 94.4%. This was a variance of only 1.4 % from the overall performance of Kampala which was at 95.8%. The performance of UPE schools in Kampala, with an overall pass rate of 94.4 %, was better in the comparison to the national average pass rate of 90.9%. At Division 1, a pass rate of 9% was the same as the national average and at Division 2, a pass rate of 63% was much better compared to the national average of 47% pass at Division 2.

 

We have continued to engage partners to provide scholastic material to our children. In 2017, we provided 19,000 readers to primary school and secondary school children with support from Dr. Denis Sempebwa. We will continue to work on the working conditions of the teachers, motivate the teachers and work on the general attitude and mind set of our community towards supporting children in schools in order to improve the learning environment.

 

Our performance is not measured only in terms of passes in the national examinations alone but we also deliberately have vibrant programs in co-curricular activities including school ball games, school athletics and Music, Dance and Drama. KCCA allocates UGX 50 Million for these activities every financial year from local revenue. In the recent past we have excelled in these various disciplines.  For example, Buganda Road P/S representing KCCA emerged the best at the 2017 National MDDP Festival that was held in Jinja. The previous year, Nakivubo Primary School had been 5th out of 44 choirs at the National level. In 2016 primary school ball games championship, the KCCA team emerged champions of Handball at the U-12 and U-14 categories and the team also won bronze in Volleyball for U-12, U-14 and U-16 categories. Similarly we continue to support the promotion of community sports in the City with funding from local revenue. We held the first ever Para- Sports Gala for People with Disabilities in 2017 and this is going to be a yearly event going forward.

 

Under the pillar of human resource development of our strategy, we have continued to register growth of the Kampala Multi-purpose Cooperative Society where KCCA has so far provided a seed grant of UGX 350 Million as support to the primary school teachers. The loan portfolio of the Cooperative Society now stands at UGX 2.6 Bn with 710 teachers so far having benefitted directly from the cooperative society. Under our regulatory mandate we have continued to inspect and monitor schools and accordingly identified 48 schools for closure in 2017. We are determined to weed out schools which do not meet the basic requirements and minimum standards for the safety and security of the learners.

In the FY 2018/19, we will continue to support our teachers through timely payment of salaries to the tune of UGX 26 Bn from G.O.U. We will also continue to make timely remittances of capitation grants to our UPE, USE schools and institutions to the tune of UGX 5.98 Bn.  We also intend to fully utilize the education infrastructure grant of UGX 2.6 Bn to complete the 9 classroom block at Kansanga Seed Secondary School, remove asbestos from classrooms at Old Kampala Secondary School, do renovation works at Ntinda Primary School, supply desks to schools and install lightning conductors in 4 more primary schools. We also intend to continue with the beautification and greening of schools including encouraging planning of trees in the school compound and along the school boundaries and planting of grass on school playgrounds.  

 

Working with our partners, we also plan to remove asbestos from Buganda Road Primary School with support from the proceeds of the 2017 MTN Marathon. We shall also renovate classrooms at Makerere University Primary School and Summit View Primary School with support from the NSSF HASH run proceeds of 2017. We also intend to raise funds for the provision of re-usable sanitary pads to the girls in primary schools. We will also continue to make the learning environment more inclusive through making specific provisions for children with special needs, including sports for children with disabilities.

 

With funding from the KCCA local revenue, we will continue supporting community sports and KCCA clubs with UGX 2.8 Bn and support tourism development and library services with additional UGX 220 Million. We intend to continue to partner with well-wishers to provide reading materials to the children and improve the functionality of school and community libraries to enhance literacy and numeracy in the learners. Working with foundations such as the Nabagereka Foundation, we will continue to impart values and morals to our young children through programs such as Ekisakaate Kya Nabagereka in KCCA schools.

We call upon all stake holders to support us in this journey to make Kampala a better City.



Development partners