MBARARA- Following the poor performance of pupils in primary seven mock exams in Mbarara district, councilors have passed stringent guidelines to headmasters and supervisors to better the situation or they risk being knifed.
Councillors say that in the last mock exams, all sub-counties performed poorly where most of the schools have ungraded pupils and those in U grade.
They pointed out among others were Bugamba sub-county with 145 pupils in U grade, Mwizi Sub-county had 164, Rugando had 122, Kashare had 106, Kagongi had 105 pupils.
While in a district council that sat on Wednesday at the district hall in Kamukuzi, councilors were irked by the trend of poor performance which they attributed to unserious headmasters and school inspectors who have abandoned their salutary roles of steering good performances in schools.
Godfrey Baryomunsi the vice chairman LCV pointed out that headmasters and inspectors have become a menace to the education sector in the district. “I entirely blame the school inspectors and headmasters, because these people are charged with a role to ensure schools perform better, like the inspectors they get much money to visit these schools but we wonder what they do in the field, we cannot allow this to remain like this.”
He adds, “we got information that some inspectors invite headmasters to come to their offices so that they sign in the books to indicate that they visited their school when in actual sense have not gone there, there are certain schools where you reach and you ask yourself whether that school has a headmaster or management, we better save the situation out there as soon as possible.”
Councilors raised a concern of unnecessary transfers of headmasters which they said sometimes involves ‘undue influence’. District Speaker Balaam Ndyaguma who was presiding over the meeting also echoed the same saying that a lot of politics is involved in most transfers which he said should be revised. He condemned the manner also in which promising and performing headmasters are being transferred. “Some headmasters reach in schools and before the establish structures and get used to the parents, a transfer letter comes in this should stop.”
“If a headmaster has failed to perform in one school why do you transfer that person to another school, this is transferring a problem to another problem which we cannot allow,” said Ndyaguma.
Councilors unanimously resolved that for any headmaster especially those in the acting capacity who fails to perform should go back to class and teach. They further agreed that the social service committee with the office of human resource and CAO should always avail transfer course lists to district executive committee to have an input before they are effected.
Ndyaguma said that some of the schools are in dilapidated structures and sorry state which call for their closure. “ If these inspectors are not doing their job, these schools will be closed and we shall remain with private schools.”
They tasked the social service committee to ensure that in the next council meeting headmasters with highest numbers of grade U are invited to explain what could be the challenge.
Felix Cuthbert Esoku challenged councilors that some of the things cannot work the way they think noting that they have to understand that some parents have also disowned their obligation of ensuring that their children pay school dues timely.
“There is a school I went to, it was almost getting to midterm, and the headmaster had collected only 10,000shs so how do you expect that headmaster to perform better, we need also to remind parents of their duties.”
