The meeting was held in the newly created Nyakisi sub county, Kyenjojo district on 2nd February, 2018 to identify and discuss key challenges in education aimed at improving the sector in the district. In attendance was the area inspector of schools Mwenge central Madam Stella Kabanyoro who at the same time represented the district education officer, the sub county chief, the sub county chairperson, parish chiefs, head teachers, religious leaders, members of management committees in schools, parents, opinion leaders, elderly and the media.
In his communication, the strategic partnership and communications officer, David Kugonza who spoke on behalf of ToroDev informed participants that as an organization such platforms are organized for citizens to interact with their elected leaders, present their issues to them as well as get feedback from them. He said ToroDev promotes the use of ICT tools both traditional and modern to improve service delivery in communities. David said in addition to the available platforms promoted by ToroDev, the organization has developed an e-participation system called ‘Me and My Leader’ (MML) where citizens can report on service delivery issues from their communities before ToroDev team shares the reported issues with sub county, district and national level duty bearers for solutions. David further said citizens can participate by visiting www.mmlonline.org for those using internet and also send a pre-paid Sms to 6115. He asked participants to promote the system such that the intended objectives can be achieved.

“We are much aware of the mentioned challenges facing education in this community like; early marriages, school drop-out, lack of enough teachers, infrastructure, lack of proper accountability of funds received by some head teachers, lack of lunch for teachers and learners, lack of staff quarters, etc as officials from education department in the district we are working hard to find a lasting solution to solve them but we need to work as a team to be successful. Effective this term we are going to give school management committees monitoring tools such that they monitor schools and report of any anomalies even before education officials come on ground to do their monitoring’’, Said Stella Kabanyoro area Inspector of schools Mwenge Central, Kyenjojo district.

“Teachers are blamed for pupils’ poor performance in schools but we are trying our best to work with limited education facilities, we walk long distances due to lack of staff houses, the pupil teacher ratio is high, etc but also parents are to blame for increased absenteeism of pupils, drop out, etc because they have not played their role of sending pupils to schools and monitoring them because they want to keep them in agriculture and in the process children miss class and perform poor’’, Said Mr. Kaguma a teacher at Rubango primary school during plenary.

A number of challenges were identified but key among them are; Child/early marriage, absenteeism/time management of teachers & pupils, lack of lunch for teachers & pupils, understaffing, lack of staff quarters, lack of proper accountability by some head teachers for the funds they receive from parents, lack of regular monitoring by sub county duty bearers, etc
Out puts.
- One hundred & ten(110) citizens attended including district education department officials, sub county duty bearers, head teachers, management committees, parents, etc
- Key challenges affecting education sector in Nyakisi subcounty presented to duty bearers and technocrats to provide solutions
- Acton plan developed.
Action plan.
Early marriage.Sensitization meetings to be done in schools by all parties and all Duty bearers,Parents,PTA &SMCs members Teachers and Advocacy forum(Effective 1st January 2018 )
Fencing of school premises ,Arrest all those that tress pass around school premises and Schools to employ day & night security guards.Head teachers,School management committees,Office of the Sub county chief,Security guards will be responsible (Effective first term 2018 )
Absenteeism/time management of pupils &teachers,effective first week of first term (from 5th -9th February, 2018) sub county officials to work with parish chiefs to record attendance in schools and punish those parents who will have not sent their children to school.responsible person(Management committees SMCs & PTA teachers Subcounty leadership Head teachers Office of the District Inspector of school Advocacy forum(Effective first term 2018 5th February, 2018)
Lack of lunch for teachers and learners,Sensitizing parents on the importance of lunch for children at school and Mobilizing for parents contribution towards lunch (Effective first term5th February,2018) Parish and sub county officials ,Head teachers, Parents,Management committees ,Advocacy forum are responsible.
Under staffing, Management committees to work with head teachers to contribute some fee for PTA Teachers in the meantime,responsible person Inspector of schools, office of the district education officer,management committees ,Head teachers(On- going)
Lack of staff quarters, All projects to be budgeted for then request parents to contribute in cash or kind to solve the challenge responsible person ministry of education through (DEO)Advocacy forumHead teachersManagement committees( on going)
Lack of proper accountability by head teachers on funds paid by parents,School administration to draw a budget showing what will be done for easy tracking and Pin information on school notice boards for parents & visitors to view, Responsible person head teachers, Finance committees,Advocacy forum,Subcounty leadership, Office of the DEO ( Should be done at the end of every term).
Lack of regular monitoring.Office of the area Inspector of schools to provide monitoring tools to subcounty officials to use in their monitoring for record keeping.It should be done by sub county leaders DEDIS, Subcounty duty bearers, Management committees (effective first term of 2018(5th February,2018)
Need for Refresher courses for some teachers And exposure visits,ToroDev to support the whole exercise for the first quarter as the subcounty integrates it in the subcounty budget for additional quarters representatives from every school to visit better performing schools in the district and outside the district.Responsible person, Sub county administration,head teachers,teachers ,advocacy forum,ToroDev ( effective 2nd term in 2018.)
we are grateful to our donors for financial support.