NGOs launch strategy to improve learning outcomes 

To create a more comprehensive and sustainable impact on the education sector, more than 70 local NGOs in Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania united under the Regional Education Learning Initiative (RELI) have officially launched their strategy in Uganda, writes YUDAYA NANGONZI.

RELI is a member-driven initiative with an approach to building a movement that envisions a society where all children in East Africa receive quality education that enables them to thrive in life.

The platform will convene, nurture, and transform members’ capacity to influence positive shifts in education policies, practices and systems in Uganda. Out of the 70 signed-up member organizations in the region, at least 24 are based in Uganda. The RELI Uganda strategic plan is hinged on four pillars; evidence, collaboration, innovation and scale-up, and self-sustenance.

While launching the four-year strategy at Four Points by Sheraton hotel in Kampala recently, the acting director of Education Standards, Frances Atima, said the launch has come at a critical time when the government is undertaking wide progressive reforms in the education sector.

“We used to look at NGOs and the Education ministry as competitors but we have since appreciated that education is a shared responsibility. Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania have similar challenges in education that can only be achieved if we don’t work in silos anymore,” Atima said.

She added: “The government demands certain standards from schools and you [NGOs] also take your standards to schools. Certainly, after you have left these schools, the teachers will continue with government standards, yet NGOs invest heavily in these interventions.”

Atima said the strategy will relieve schools of being bombarded with several uncoordinated interventions by NGOs in the education sector. She urged RELI members to put more emphasis on engaging teachers.

“We keep asking ourselves about the teachers of the 60s. They weren’t well paid and had no degrees but they were the best at imparting values and skills to learners. We need to go back to the basics of teaching by making our teachers feel guilty for the impact of not teaching well in classrooms,” she said.

Atima quoted the 2019 World Bank report on Learning Poverty in sub-Saharan Africa whose findings indicated that 53% of children aged 10 cannot read and understand a short text by the end of primary school. In Uganda alone, 83% of the children were not proficient in reading. According to the World Bank, such high levels of illiteracy are an early warning sign that all global educational goals and other related development goals are in jeopardy.

“The progress in reducing learning poverty is far too slow to meet the SDG aspirations: at the current rate of improvement, in 2030 about 43% of children will still be learning poor. Even if countries reduce their learning poverty at the fastest rates we have seen so far in this century, the goal of ending it will not be attained by 2030,” reads the World Bank report.

NOT TOO LATE

Despite the Word Bank findings, Atima said it’s not too late for countries to redeem their potential under the new strategy. She believes that every child can achieve as long as there’s a supportive learning environment.

“NGOs have several solutions to our education problems. Let us put these solutions together to improve the quality of education,” she said.

The RELI Uganda country lead, Modern Karema, said the new strategy will foster a collaborative voice towards advancing quality education for all children in Uganda.

“By 2017, we existed as disconnected like islands of excellence, each doing our nice things with no unified voice or collective agency. However, along the way, we realized that there’s a need to get better by having a common local voice to fix issues of education quality and equity,” Karema said.

He added: “As single institutions, each went to the ministry at our own time, to sell our petite evidence instead of collaborating. RELI is now here to implement what we can’t achieve as individual organizations. When RELI is visible, we are all visible as organizations.”

According to Emmanuel Lubaale, the RELI Uganda country coordinator, member organizations have since embraced the power of collaboration which has attracted donor funding. Lubaale said the education sector is a huge one that calls for a paradigm shift in the operations of NGOs in the education sector to identify the most suitable solutions to guarantee quality education.

nangonzi@observer.ug