By Our Reporter
One of the complaints that has always lingered on among the Ugandan elites is the pay accorded to our Ugandan Teachers. On surface take, it sounds an intellectual thought. Increase teachers’ salaries, and get better quality education. For starters, since Museveni came into power, salaries have been increased in almost every financial year. On the contrary, the quality of education as per the output of students has drastically gone down.
Whereas the governments pretend to pay the teachers, the teachers also pretend to pay the students. But do the Ugandan teachers deserve higher wages?
First of all, we need to ask how much other civil servants of equal qualifications earn. Probably much less than what the teacher earns. So why are we blowing out our horns canvassing for more salaries of Ugandan teachers? Is it because they have branded themselves as the saviours of Ugandan society, the builders of this nation? Is it because when they lay down their tools, the whole country comes to a standstill?
An average Ugandan teacher works for less than 4 hours a day. But that’s not the hurting part. The hurting and annoying part is that a Ugandan teacher never takes responsibility for his or her work. Factor in the three months leave taken out each year and you recognize that Ugandan teachers are being ungrateful.
Before we improve teachers’ wages, we need to first make the entry requirements into the education field higher. Education has become the escape route for failures. Your kid can’t get government sponsorship on other courses, send them into education. Someone failed their senior four, let them become primary teachers.
Thus, we need to make entry into the education profession harder as we increase teachers wages. The problem with education system in Uganda at the moment is that it’s not getting the best, it’s getting the rejects. The recent World Bank Service Delivery Indicators study showed that only 54% of Ugandan primary teachers were literate ie able to score at least 50% in a primary exam.
Finally make those teachers to sign performance contracts and bear responsibility for performance and outcomes. As with every other profession, employees take responsibility for their work and are charged for shoddy work. When a doctor loses a patient out of negligence, they get sued. When an engineer constructs a substandard road, they are penalized. When architects make shoddy building plans, they are punished. Yet when many students fail, the teachers never take responsibility, the blame is heaped on the students. Why should a teacher who has taught students for over 10 years with none getting a first grade expect to earn the same amount as that one who has scored at least 70% first grades every time.
Whereas we have some Ugandan teachers that really add value to the system and deserve a 500 pay raise, the majority of Ugandan teachers don’t just deserve a pay-raise, they deserve to be sacked.
The parting school of thought should also get us to ask some more questions. What is the money allocated to the education sector? How many teachers do we have in Uganda? What if we paid every one of those teachers a decent salary, how much would we require? Assuming each of these teachers earned at least 2 million shillings a month. What would be the total amount earned by all Ugandan teachers? A simple calculation shows that it would surpass the entire education budget. This means that we would spend all money on wages and nothing else in the education sector. This is unrealistic. Perhaps then we can conclude, that our Ugandan teachers are being paid exactly what the economy can afford.