BUWAMBO SEED SCHOOL

Revision Time

Head Teacher Mr. Damulira Christopher

Seed schools, a foundation for UPE Graduates’ future Insight into Buwambo Seed Secondary School

S

eed Schools are secondary schools Uganda Government is establishing in the Sub-counties that do not have any form of secondary school.

They support the implementation of the Universal Secondary Education (USE) program, by taking care of pupils who have completed their primary education under the Universal Primary Education (UPE) program.

One of such school is Buwambo Seed Secondary School. Over the last five years, Buwambo Seed’s academic performance has been exemplary, compared to many local private schools and many others around the country. “We have always excelled in both Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) and Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) and have always been among the best performing 100 Schools in the country,” Mutyaba Alexander, the Deputy Head Teacher tells UPE@20years Souvenir Magazine.

The school Buwambo Seed Secondary School is in Wakiso District, Nansana Municipality, Gombe Division and Buwambo Parish in Lwesuubo village about 40km from Kampala City, off Gayaza Road via

Mpererwe trading center.

It is a young Universal Secondary Education (USE) that started under a mango tree in a nearby UPE school (Buwambo Church of Uganda Primary School) on October 23, 2010.

With the commitment of the existing Administration led by Mr. Damulira Christopher, the Head Teacher and I his Deputy Mutyaba Alexander, the school started with government support from a World Bank fund for the construction of 11 seed schools around the country.

While the construction was underway, the teaching was going on from under mango trees at the nearby primary school. The recruitment of qualified teachers was going on at the same time as the engagement of students from the surrounding villages.

Starting the schools was not easy due to the negative attitude of parents about UPE and USE schools, yet because we had the determination, we attracted good teachers who were willing to work as volunteers until government enrolled us. For more than 6 months, we worked without pay not until the Education Service commission interviewed the teachers and those who qualified were sent to the Ministry of Education and Spots for Enrollment.

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Deputy Head Teacher - Alexander Mutyaba Please talk of your experience of the performance of children from public UPE schools joining secondary education compared to those from private primary schools.

The performance of children from UPE schools compared to that of pupils from private schools is relatively poor, not because the students are dull, but we have realized that teachers in most UPE schools do not really make the in-put it takes to enable their pupils to realize their optimum potential.

Policies like the illegalization of the PTA fees from parents for supplementing the small teachers’ salaries need to be reformed to assist the UPE Schools.

The teacher depends on a salary that is grossly inadequate and there is no motivation, hence the teacher looks to ‘plan B’ to make ends meet, compromising the teaching time in the process.

The pupils are not assisted to cultivate their self-confidence, they cannot express themselves and always have low self-esteem. There is always an inferiority complex in them, hence they are not competitive, compared to those from the private schools yet they could have been better.

Please talk of the impact of seed schools on the absorption of UPE graduates The absorption of UPE graduates has not been that easy; changing their mannerisms, habits and attitude is difficult. At Buwambo Seed School, we have always nurtured those students to equal their colleagues and convinced them that they can do better.

All students are treated equally. We have motivated them to excelling in many activities, particularly the academics and they have really proved themselves to be worthy.

Further, we have always enabled these student to prove to themselves that they were not born inferior so they can absolutely excel in one way or the other; many of them are excellent in sports and in other co-curricular activities.

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Exam Time

How have your (USE) UCE and UACE results been compared to private schools in your area over time?

Over the last five years, Buwambo Seed Secondary School’s performance has been so good, relative to the many private schools around us and country wide. We have always excelled in both UCE and UACE and we are always among the best 100 Schools in the country.

With our first seating (UCE 2011) we had only two first grades of the 32 students that we had picked from surrounding villages yet some had left school years back.

On January 30, 2016 Saturday Monitor Newspaper reported about the top ranking schools, Buwambo Seed Secondary School was among the top best schools in 2015 results in the country.

The still in the same year, in the Saturday Vision of February, 13, 2016, in school ranking of all A level schools, Buwambo was among the best 100 schools in the country.

For last year’s performance, it was among the UCE best schools in the country (Daily Monitor February 1, 2017. And with evidence, on February, 22, 2017 (Daily Monitor and New vision) we had two students among the best students in the country with 17 points each. With sciences, our best student last year got 13 points with a B in chemistry, B biology and D in Mathematics. Unfortunately he failed the subsidiaries.

However many seed schools cannot make it because of a lack of commitment, the “I don’t care attitude” that is prevalent in the UPE Schools, has wormed its way into some of the USE schools. Such schools are characterized by very poor performance grades leaving one to wonder if any teaching is done at all.

The main problem, however is that in most of them, the administrators and teachers have low motivation, hence lack of self-drive to deliver, which calls for strong armed interventions from the education authorities.

Buwambo Seed

What are the attributes for your performance?

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A good, self-motivated administration.

What are your suggestions for improving USE delivery?

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Team work as a staff.

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Positive attitude towards work.

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Staff motivation. We motivate our staff by giving the transport of 10,000/= on each day one comes to school. Not only that, there are several allowances that are given to the teachers to keep the work moving.

The public should value the government efforts in supporting such schools. They are in most cases community and church based requiring the support of the community and the general public.

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Government should sufficiently fund the schools; USE funding needs to always be according to the students head count and should always come in time.

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Government should endeavor to put up infrastructure in terms of enough classrooms and the teachers should be motivated, part of which is salary increment.

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Government and district officials that are concerned with the supervision should rise to the occasion and the students. The communities and the public at large need to be sensitive and have a positive attitude towards USE schools.

We attribute our performance to;

We always look back at the genesis of the school and where we are going.

We always set targets that we must beat.

We love our work, our school and the community at large because both I and my colleague are born in this area, which we cannot afford to fail. We are committed to our work and put in a lot of efforts, arriving at school at 4am-5am and departing after 7pm.

We love our students and motivate them to do the best, convincing them that they can make it.

Please talk about the challenges you have encountered; in the implementation of USE, and with parents, community and pupils in respect of USE •

The public is still negative about UPE and USE schools, so the implementation of these programs is not easy with such an attitude, much as the government has fulfilled its roles of funding and implementation.

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The funding is not sufficient and does not come in time; the planned activities are not always carried out as planned.

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There is no effective supervision by the various authorities.

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Government needs to deliver on providing laboratory equipment, classrooms and staff quarters as required.

Appeal Buwambo seed Secondary school, now a model seed school in the country still needs government, public, well-wishers’, NGOs and companies’ support.

Accommodation Our enrollment rises every year because of the good performance in academics, discipline and smartness. We started with a total of 134 students in 2010 we now have 780. We need more classrooms besides the existing eight, which cannot accommodate the two streams that each class has; for instance S.1 alone has 241 students, we need furniture too.

Computer lessons We do not have a computer lab and have a few computers. We have 32 candidates to seat for ICT this year but only do with 6 working computers.

SCHOOL CONTACTS: Head Teacher - 0772368445, Deputy Head Teacher - 0701486656 / 0782486656

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