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| Ms. Medrace (seated) during the school visit at Alang Primary school, Kole District, Feb, 2013 |
The Education Local Expertise
Centre Uganda was founded by Edukans in the year 2010 as its front desk country
office in Uganda. Edukans is a Netherlands based development organization with
a unique focus on basic education. It recognizes that today 75 million children
worldwide do not attend school although every child is entitled to high quality
basic education.
The ELECU works with partners in
Teso, Lango, and Rwenzori sub region to implement activities in support of
improvement of quality basic education. The programme addresses gaps in
community participation, literacy, and numeracy, vulnerable children and
teachers’ capacity and motivation. In all, there is a strong link to conflict
and peace building, food and nutrition and economic empowerment among others.
In 2012, Edukans through the ICCO
Alliance funded partners to implement programmes for an initial period of one
year. RWECO which is a consortium of four Non Governmental Organizations (KALI,
GHFRD, RICNET and IWDP) in conjunction with CfSU are in partnership and running
EPP project with a goal: Improved literacy and proficiency levels in English
language of 9000 primary school pupils and 450 teachers by 2014.
1.0 Theme : Community involvement for improved quality basic education
All Edukans partners work directly or indirectly with communities to
enhance the quality of education for all within the country’s policy frame- work (Education Act; NDP;JAF;QEI)2 .
2.0
Objectives
1. Exposure
to different education initiatives focusing (among others) on increased and
improved community participation in primary education;
2. Interaction and consultation- also
with district local government representatives- around challenges and
opportunities, lessons learned, and good practices of on- going and new
initiatives by Edukans partners.
Further strengthen strategic
cooperation and complementarily among and between Edukans partners, district,
local governments and Ugandan partner organization activities.
Rwenzori Consortium for Civic
Competence, on having received an invitation letter from Education Expertise
Centre Uganda, on 25th/February/2013, two EPP programme officers :(
RWECO, SfCU) ms Balira Medrace and Ms. Kamba Lydia respectively travelled to
Lira to attend a 3 days’ Learning and Exchange visits for Edukans Partners.
Thus: reporting day 25th, and arrived at exactly 5:49pm, closure was
28th at 3:37pm.
The Learning and Exchange visit
and Program Review participants were hosted by Local Expertise Centre at Hotel
Margherita Palace in Lira town.
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| Ms. Connie (left) appreciating work done by CEASOP with the community in Kole district, Feb, 2013 |
The Learning visit and programme
Review started well on 26th Feb. at 8:30 am with a warm welcome and
opening remarks by Connie Alezuyo , including brief introduction of the participants as well as taking a cup of tea and a brief on field visits and thereafter went
to the field in two groups under two leading teams, namely :
CEASOP, and TPO/POBEDAM. Group 1
departed for TPO/PODAM site at Alebtong and
group 2 went to CEASOP main vocational training center.
The major aim of the field visits
is to enable all Edukans Partners access Rural Outreach Centres in Lango
sub-region and see what is being done to ensure effective community
participation in education delivery and how best to and collaboratively address
the gaps in community participation, literacy, and numeracy, vulnerable
children and teachers’ capacity and motivation which led to high quality basic
education.
CEASOP Vocation training centre
recruits drop outs especially primary pupils and vulnerable children plus
orphans in and around Lira town. The institution provide basic skills such as;
constraction and brick laying and
concrete practice, carpentry and joinery, catering, tailoring and motor vehicle
mechanics, black smith metal fabrication, hair dressing, knitting business
skills, bee keeping/apiary/horticulture and home management.
At 2:00pm, the participants
visited Alang primary school in Kole
district and interacted with staff,
members of school management committee on school performance who
appreciated the role played by CEASOP as : construction of a pit latrine,
sensitization of parents about their roles as in providing scholastic materials
and lunch for their children which in turn increased their concentration thus improved
performance that enabled school reach to
a height of one pupil getting first grade, promising to get as many grades as
possible the sky is the limit.
-The strategies applied to improve the vocational training are: -village
loans savings and schemes association.
-Use of technical personnel/ local
resources to provide skills and follow up of training.
-Trade survey to aid trainers
train on only needed skills within the community.
OUTPUT/ RESULTS:
CEASOP has one major training center and three, outreach canters which have led to:
-Acquisition of skills that has
led to improvement in trainees incomes for instance Abeja Brenda and Among Ruth
of Kole training center testified that
parents give them clothes which they make into finished fabrics. Also
brick laying skills acquired by Mary Rose and Okello Jimmy who have built a
titanic house told their true story of how they earn Shs.8000 per day.
CHALLENGES:
-Shortage of sawing machines, show
cased by eight machines being used by 21 trainees.
-High costs because trainees pay
Shs.130,000 plus food items which is not always paid in time.
-Lack of teaching-learning
materials like clothing, cookery ingredients, plus instructional materials as:
designing chats with different modern fashions.
-Shortage of instructors
especially in catering and home management department.
-Duration period for training
basic skills is too long (2years)
RECOMMENATIONS:
-CEASOP in collaboration with
ELECU should provide more tailoring machines to both main and outreach centres.
Provide trainees with a variety of learning
materials as fashion charts.
-Reduce on training period for basic skills
instead introduce better training manual in patterning and designing to meet
the community demand
The workshop was adjourned on 28th
Feb./ 2013 with administrative closing remarks by Connie as follows:
-MOSIQUE activities will start in
March 6, 2013 and will deal with tutors (monitoring & sharing in education)
-Concerning ICT, the Donor
(Jennifer) is likely to arrive on 18th march 2013 and will be
visiting EPP and SfCU in the Rwenzori region.
A two day training workshop in April
most likely he first week o last week the month in the Rwenzori region.
-Selection of STAR SCHOOLS among EPP target schools
-Edukans Partners to continue
exchanging ideas and invite peer feedback.
-Collect information in EPP target
schools about data on school enrollment 2012 PLE results, SMC/ PTA, pupil:
teacher ratio, gender and reproductive health (PIACY)
RWECO was given an appreciation
for sending in their activity reports and documentation as blog stories, Rwenzori
voice in time.
Conclusion:
The project on improving the
quality of basic education fits well in the National Development Plan and
Education Policy priorities. The focus being the child in class and out of
class, teacher and parents. The lessons in the first year are a real indication
that education needs a holistic approach
other than looking at the child in class only. efforts must be made to follow
the child during co-curricular activities.
The exchange visits also made it
clear to the participants in integrating life schools and vocation education in
the curriculum. A number of lessons were learned during the exchange visit. The
recommendations of the exchange visit and sharing should inform the next programming
for ELEC and Partners.
Reported by
Ms. Medrace Balira
RWECO
RWECO
the report ia ok but it needs some spacing coz the work looks abit squizzed
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