Reimagining the Quality of Primary Education in Uganda
On April 28th 2016, Teach For Uganda (TfU) launched our crowd funding campaign earlier than anticipated because not only do we sense the urgency of now, but we also see quality education for all as Uganda’s civil rights issue of our time.
However, we did not know that on April 30th, exactly two days after we launched our campaign, we would wake up to this news headline, “Schools close as government lacks 23,000 primary teachers,” in the Daily Monitor, one of Uganda’s leading papers.
At Teach For Uganda, we are deeply aware of the systemic injustices that exist within Uganda’s public education system. These include but are not limited to: Under-qualified and incompetent teachers, a shortage of quality teachers, high rates of teacher absenteeism, overwhelming high student to teacher ratios, poor leadership and mis-management of resources in the education sector, just to mention a few.
Teach for Uganda was founded to address these inequities as well as to create a pipeline of committed, empathetic and moral leaders to work as transformational teachers and leaders in Uganda’s under resourced schools. The teachers we train go on to be efficient, moral and patriotic leaders in all sectors of our society, ensuring transparency and accountability of our nation’s resources as well as working collaboratively with all sectors to address the root causes of education inequity in their country.
As the co-founder of TfU, I know these systemic challenges first hand, because I went through the same public education system before I barely made it out. Twenty years ago I was seated in the same classroom as these children, having walked 10 kilometers to school, sometimes braving the rain to get an education. Yet often than not, I just had to make the same 10 kilometer trip back home because there were not enough teachers or my teacher was absent for one reason or the other.
You can find out about my own arduous journey as an 11-year old boy to gain a quality education and why I believe this is an issue that deserves our generation’s attention if Uganda and its global partners are to achieve the vision 2040 that we all hope for.
Today, my team and I view TFU as a solution to bridge this quality gap and eventually address the root causes of education inequality that have existed and locked tens of thousands of Uganda’s youth out of opportunity for decades.
The solution exists in Uganda’s young, talented and passionate graduate youth and professionals who will be trained and equipped with adaptive and moral leadership, as well as pedagogical skills to unleash transformative learning outcomes for their young brothers and sisters in primary schools across the country.
Want to know more? Find out here in the Huffington Post blog
Want to know how to support this cause? Click here
© Teach For Uganda Team.
