A number of Primary and secondary schools owned by the Government and the private sector in Kagadi district have registered low turn up of learners on the first day of the beginning of the second school term of the 2023 academic year. 

When we engaged some head teachers and parents, they attributed the low turn-up to the hard economic times, with parents still struggling with finding money to pay the school fees and buying requirements for the learners.

 The Headteacher of Kagadi Secondary School Sebastian Semakula told COU Family TV that only 1,400 students turned up on day one of the second term out of the total enrolment of over 3000 students at the school.

Most of the teachers turned up for the second term but a few of them were still taking part in the validation exercise being undertaken by the Ministry of Education & Sports, in a bid to weed out ghost or non-existent teachers from the government payroll.

Tophil Byarugaba, the Director of Studies at Kagadi SS, noted that although the teaching-learning process had begun well in the newly opened second term, the school still needs more teachers and scholastic materials due to the big number of students.

The Headteachers and Directors of Primary and secondary schools including Agape Learning Center Primary School, Kagadi Peoples SS, Bunyoro College SS, Kagadi Model Primary School and Bishop Rwakaikara Primary School thanked the government for initiating the new Lower Secondary School Curriculum. They, however, expressed concern over numerous challenges in the implementation of the curriculum and appealed for government intervention.

In the schools COU Family TV visited, we found less than half of the learners had turned up on the first day of the second school term of 2023.

Ambrose