By Juma Nsubuga
The Ministry of Education and sports has acknowledged the need to increase the slots available under the affirmative action scheme.
This was revealed by the Under Secretary for the Ministry of Education and sports Dr Jane Egau Okou, saying the Ministry is committed to addressing this issue.
Dr Okou was responding to questions raised in the 11th Annual report on the state of Equal Opportunities in Uganda regarding the education sector.
Equal Opportunities Commission observed the need to increase the number of slots available under the district Quota Scheme.
“The affirmative Scheme for Public Universities has 1000 slots of which district Quota has 896, disability scheme 64 and talented persons 40 and it is a policy matter under discission” she explained.
Appearing before the Equal Opportunities Commission at the EOC headquarters in Kampala, Okou noted that the education policy review commission report and national higher education policy will consider the challenge of limited slots available under the district Quota Scheme.
She however, said that increasing the slots from 64 to 640 is overly ambitious. “The recent data shows that on average approximately 300 applications are received annually for consideration under the disability Scheme”.
Okuo who represented the Permanent Secretary was also tasked to explain why districts in the North and North east have the lowest number of beneficiaries under the university student’s loan Scheme in the country.
She said the affected districts in the North, West Nile and North east have continuously registered low number of applicants sometime having no applicants at all.
“The board has deliberately awarded loans to all the applicants in the affected districts where it has registered low applicants. The districts referred to here are Amudat, Karenga, Madi-Okullo, Obongi, Kaabong, Buvuma and Terego among other” she noted adding that;
“On affirmative action, the board has deliberately awarded all loan applicants from districts that register blow number of applicants with an additional seven points to female applicants to increase on uptake of the girl child”
The Commission (EOC) further urged the ministry to address factors responsible for the poor performance of PLE in different regions to promote equity fin the country and why schools don’t have enough tea hung materials, teacher absenteeism and high pupil teacher ratios.
“In attempt to address the poor performance in PLE, the Ministry of Education has analysed the PLE results and will conduct a stakeholders engagements focusing on the worst performing districts to discuss strategies for improvement” she explained adding that the Ministry of Education continues to strengthen schools inspection,monitoring and support supervision using electronic systems like e-inspection TELA.
About the status of Busoga and Bunyoro Universities, Okuo updated EOC that the taskforce management committee has fulfilled many of the requirements as stipulated by the national council for higher education for establishing a public university.
“A memorandum of understanding is being finalized with UPDF engineering brigade to undertake renovation of facilities that will enable accreditation of courses and the university is on course to start operations in the next academic year”. she confirmed.
About Bunyoro University, Okuo confirmed that the Ministry of Education with support from the stakeholders from Bunyoro continues its efforts to identify possible places or land to establish the university.
“18 academic programmes developed and approves by national council for higher education and 9 institutional policies have been developed for regulation of day to day activities” she said.
The meeting was chaired by EOC chairperson Safia Nalule Jjuuko and she who advised the Ministry of Education to ensure every Ugandan gets education because it a key to the success.
