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The benefits of attending Boarding School in Uganda

Uganda being one of the low developing countries in the World still faces challenges in education. Physical infrastructure is poor and teachers are paid salaries that cannot enable them to meet the basic necessities of life. Poverty is a big challenge due to high unemployment rates as well as illiteracy. HIV/AIDS is another very big challenge that has claimed a number of lives leaving very many children orphaned and women as widows.

The above mentioned challenges have left very many children with an option of attending government/day schools that have many associated problems that together make learning hard for the students/pupils.

Uganda’s education system is characterized by Day Schools and Boarding Schools. Day schools are in most cases owned by the government. However, due to the high corruption among government officials and poor funding of these schools, the education in day schools is extremely poor. Teachers in Day schools are poorly facilitated with salaries that cannot enable them to acquire basic needs of life such as accommodation, among many others. These teachers earn USD.100 or less per month. In addition to being inadequate, salaries are paid very late. For example, for the past 4 months government teachers have not been paid. Imagine the difficulty for these teachers to survive in terms of paying their rent, feed themselves and the family as well. Everything in the shops, markets is extremely expensive due to over taxation. Actually, these teachers have been advocating for a pay raise but all in vain. They even laid down their tools and went on strike at the beginning of this on-going term three but the government did not increase their pay. It instead threatened to terminate their contracts. For fear of being unemployed, they decided to go back to classes and resumed teaching. All the same, students lost a full month of the term. Yet, this is a term for the final National Exams. How can a desperate, hungry and angry teacher teach students? Are their students likely to gain enough knowledge to pass a national exam? The only real answer is “NO!”

Due to the fact that Day schools are poorly funded, pupils often have to study under trees so when it rains, there are no lessons. Chalk, text books and other scholastic materials are a big challenge to these schools. As such, children almost just go to school to pass time and age chronologically. In fact, there are adults of 18 years who are still trying and struggling to finish Primary Level. Some secondary level students are still trying to finish school at the age of 28. Orphans whose guardians cannot afford school fees in boarding schools make up the largest percentage of children attending government schools.

Further, students walk very many kilometers to access day schools. In most cases in a distance of 100 kms there can be only one school and all children in that locality have to attend that. Transport is poor with very bushy, muddy/dusty roads. Yet, school going children have to walk through them late in the night when going to and from the schools. These roads put children - especially girls - at risk of being raped, murdered and being exposed to all sorts of evil that can occur on such roads.
Still, by the time children get to day schools, they are already so tired that they cannot concentrate in class. In fact some just sleep when teachers are teaching. A case in point: on October 21, 2013 I was heading to Rakai District Headquarters and at 10:00 a.m children were still walking to distant schools yet lessons start at 8:00 a.m. This means that these children had lost 2 hours and yet they still had a long distance to cover before they get to schools.

Another day last month (September) I spent a night in Kyotera (one of the trading centers of Rakai district) and I woke up very early in the morning to catch the first bus to Kampala but it was still extremely dark. On the journey I met children walking in the dark, busy roads heading to their respective distant schools. Some were walking in groups of two, yet very many were walking singly with a big difference in terms of distance from one student to another. Parents/guardians have no money to give to their children to board buses; neither do schools have buses, so the only alternative left is to walk all those very long and risky distances to and from schools.

There is no light along the roads because electricity is not in most parts of the villages of Uganda. This kind of life exposes many dangers to school going children because there are many evils along the way. In fact, this explains why most day school girls become pregnant so often. As such, they drop out of schools and begin producing carelessly. Not that they just want to become pregnant per say, but situations force them to sometimes. For example, we have motorcycle riders commonly known as “Boda-Bodas,”in Uganda (they transport people at a fee), who have spoilt day school going girls by impregnating them. Because these girls walk long distances, a boda-boda rider can convince and promise to offer a free ride to a girl every day with an intention of loving her. As such, a girl can give in for free ride and end up pregnant. This is because these girls so often times lack somebody to talk to them before they land into danger. Even when you just talk to them without solving the distance walking problem, you may not attain good results.

Therefore, Boarding schools serve the best solution in Uganda because they are well equipped with scholastic materials, well trained and motivated teachers.