Education Department

The Education Sector is one of the sectors prioritized under the second National Development Plan as key to the transformation of the country. The district education department has the mandate of providing technical and professional guidance in the management of Education, Sports policies, plans and programmes in the District.

Mandate

Education department is responsible for the provision of quality, accessible, equitable and inclusive education. The sector has three substantive officers, the senior Inspector of schools, the senior education officer and the driver. There are two office spaces accommodating the DEO and DIS.

Besides the primary sub-sector, the District has seven Government aided Secondary schools namely Aluka SS, Zeu SS, Warr Girls SS, St. Aloysius College Nyapea, Pakadha Seed AND Jangokoro Seed SS. The sector also has two tertiary institutions namely Paidha Teachers’ College and Ora Technical Institute. The sector has inadequate staff at the district headquarter, Inadequate office space and Local revenue allocation. The teachers and pupils absenteeism is still a challenge and poor attitudes of parents towards the education of their children. There are cases of child marriages and defilement which are not reported to the relevant authority for appropriate actions. The Secondary Sub- Sector is not fully decentralised and this poses a big challenge in implementing their programmes by the district leadership

Financing and Key Partners: The Department primarily relies on Funds from the Central Government; it receives Inspection Grants and UPE Capitation Grants from the centre quarterly to meet the operational needs and SFG/ PRDP for its development projects. The department also receives Conditional grant for Teachers’ Salaries in all levels i.e. Primary, Secondary and Tertiary. Non-state actors like UNICEF and CEFROD have also contributed significantly to financing of the Department.

Pre-Primary Education:

The District has 34 ECD centres with a total enrolment of 3,780 learners out of the estimated 5,200 giving an average of 111 learners per ECD centre. There are 78 caregivers giving an ECD centre-caregiver ratio of 1:2 and caregiver-learner ratio of 1:48. Out of the 34 ECD centres, only 01 centre is licensed and registered while only 20 have functional Centre Management Committees posing management issues which affect quality of Early Childhood Development.

The situation in Zombo District does not therefore provide for all ECD age going children, contrary to Article 30 of the 1995 Constitution of Republic of Uganda and Article 26 of Core International Human Rights Treaties which stipulate rights of all persons to education.

All the 34 ECD centres have infant feeding programmes but none have energy friendly technologies like energy saving cooking stoves, bio gas latrines and woodlots among others.

The District has 44 parishes and by Education policy each parish is supposed to have at least an ECD centre hence presenting opportunity for establishment of ECD centres and caregiver training institutions by the private sector and government institutions like Kyambogo University.

The sector to ensure follow-ups of the Centres for proper registration and streamlining the learning processes, formation and training of Centre Management Committees.

Another aspect of pre-primary education is that all are privately owned and are located in urban/semi-urban Sub-counties/Trading Centres like Paidha Town Council, Nyapea RGC, Warr RGC, Zeu RGC and Alangi RGC. The gap between urban and rural children, the children of economically able parents and parents with low income has consequently widened due to accessibility and affordability of ECD Centres.

Primary Education:

Since the advent of UPE in 1997, the overall enrolment has been on the increase and this scenario has led to increased pressure on education service delivery inputs like classrooms, instructional materials, teachers, staff houses, etc. This has affected quality of learning grossly all over Uganda and it is more adverse for Zombo District that has the inputs in inadequacies. The table below shows the indicators for primary education service delivery and related parameters for further analysis and formulation of the DDP II.

The indicators for primary education service delivery and related parameters.

Source: EMIS data, 2014

From the table above, of the estimated 80,000 primary school-age going children, only 63,590 have enrolled in school representing 79%, contrary to Article 30 of the 1995 Constitution of Republic of Uganda and Article 26 of Core International Human Rights Treaties which provides for rights of all persons to education. More effort has to be put to ensure that all school going age children are enrolled and it requires all actors ranging from parents, the community, CBOs and government actors to join hands and mobilise to promote education and help end poverty and illiteracy. Salient issues from the table include poor PLE performance index which is reported at 53% and pits the district at number 80 out of 111 districts in the country. This is alarming requires urgent attention in order to reverse the seemingly declining performance. The pupil /text book ratio is 1:6 against the national standard of 1:3 could have contributed to the poor performance of pupils. One other alarming statistic is the completion rate of pupils that is reported at 47% for boys and 27% for girls (37% overall). This means that the majority of the pupils do not complete primary school education and yet they are the next generation to drive the country (district) towards socio-economic transformation.

Distribution Of Schools By Location, Enrolment and Number of teachers