A new UNICEF report has exposed critical gaps in Uganda’s secondary schools, showing hundreds lack the electricity, devices and internet needed to roll out digital learning.
Education Ministry officials, UNICEF representatives, school heads and other stakeholders gathered in Gulu City on Tuesday for the launch of From Unplugged to ICT-Ready, a Digital Readiness Assessment of Secondary Schools in Uganda carried out in 3,257 schools nationwide.
Ms Janet Akao, Education Officer at UNICEF Uganda, said the findings were worrying. ‘We found that 41% of these schools are semi-plugged, where they had unstable electricity, limited devices and very unreliable internet, and that’s a big number, while 39% of the schools are completely unconnected and did not have internet, associated devices, and teachers,’ she said.
She revealed that only 20% of schools in the country are connected to both electricity, devices and internet.
‘While up to 41 per cent of the schools were found to be semi-plugged, only 20 per cent of schools in this country are connected to both electricity, devices and internet,’ Akao added.
The study was commissioned last year by UNICEF and the Ministry of Education with funding from the Mastercard Foundation to assess ICT infrastructure needs and the capacity of schools for ICT integration. It will guide the Leaders in Teaching Uganda program, a five-year initiative from 2025 to 2030 that seeks to transform secondary education in 2,091 schools.
Of the 3,257 schools assessed, 1,527 were government-aided secondary schools, 1,040 were private community schools, 521 were private faith-based schools, 17 were universities and one was a UNITE campus.
School heads said the teacher gap is a major obstacle. ‘The instructors we have now are not professional teachers, and what are we going to do if, in many of our secondary schools, the teachers are not yet trained? Are they going to pass the right information to the learners, or are they going to mislead the learners?’ Sr Hellen Lamunu, headmistress of Sacred Heart Girls School in Gulu City, wondered.
Ms Proscovia Aber, Gulu City Inspector of Schools, said the Northern Region is trailing the rest of the country.
‘These findings, for the case of Northern Region Uganda is worrying, because as the region is trailing in almost everything, internet connectivity, we are at the lowest, ICT infrastructure and electricity connection, we are still at the lowest, including the capacity of our teachers, majority of our teachers do not have access or lack the ICT gadgets,’ Aber said.
She however expressed optimism that district education departments and stakeholders are working on policies to bridge the gap.
Mr Abubaker Bbuye, Principal Education Officer at the Education Ministry, admitted Uganda lacks professional ICT teachers.
‘We recruited a big number, and we gave them the opportunity to go and study; they used their two years to get better qualifications and went elsewhere for greener pastures. If you had 106 recruited, only about 46 are in service; the rest went for better opportunities,’ Bbuye said.
‘The problem with ICT, once the people are skilled and they get better skills, they move to places where they need challenges, a school setting may not be a kind of challenge to some of these so-called good boys and girls in terms of ICT,’ he added.
Bbuye said government is banking on research by the World Bank that is yet to be disseminated.
‘There was research done, not disseminated yet, by the World Bank, on the readiness of ICT in schools. Not yet disseminated, they looked at the readiness of schools in terms of equipment, in terms of the actual usage, etc., that will help us to determine our status,’ he said.