{"id":1077,"date":"2007-11-13T08:02:12","date_gmt":"2007-11-13T08:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/afrikaansenuus.co.za\/?p=1077"},"modified":"2007-11-13T08:02:12","modified_gmt":"2007-11-13T08:02:12","slug":"officials-divert-billions-from-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.co.za\/?p=1077","title":{"rendered":"Officials divert billions from education"},"content":{"rendered":"
AN estimated Shs16 billion released annually by the Ministry of Finance to run the Universal Primary Education programme is diverted by district authorities, a new report sanctioned by the Ministry of Education reveals.<\/p>\n

The report titled; ‘Efficiency of Public Education in Uganda’ attempts to answer queries about "how much leakage there is between the release of funding by the central government and the receipt of resources by the primary schools."<\/p>\n

"Based on expenditure and personnel audits and evaluations, the estimated leakage of recurrent expenditures after release of funds by the Ministry of Finance to Schools is Shs16b, or 6 per cent of the total budgeted recurrent primary education expenditures," the report reads in part.<\/p>\n

The report is a result of a study of the competence of Uganda’s public education system. Released in September, the report casts a gloomy picture on the internal efficiency of the government-aided primary education programme.<\/p>\n

"There are four principal sources of inefficiency. The first is the leakage of resources between the central government and the schools through ghost teachers, misuse of UPE grants to district governments," the report said, adding that the second root of incompetence is the leakage of resources within schools, mainly attributable to high rates of student, teacher and headmaster absenteeism among others.<\/p>\n

Leakages largely come up when the disbursed funds from the centre are not used for the primary purposes. The report said UPE funds were often diverted to meet costs for road maintenance and repairs "among others." It did not state what other avenues are recipients for the diverted UPE cash.<\/p>\n

Education Minister Namirembe Bitamazire told Daily Monitor yesterday that although she had read the report, she needed to have a second read to authoritatively comment about the reported diversion of funds. "I have read the report but I need time to re-read it because I had not put emphasis on the UPE funds," she said.<\/p>\n

It is government policy that the Ministry of Finance sends UPE grants to district accounts who disburse the funds and supervise the use at the various primary schools. However, a source at Ministry of Education said a 2005 cabinet sanction gave districts the prerogative of "re-allocating" at least 10 per cent of the funds to other pressing district programmes.<\/p>\n

Mr Keith Muhakanizi, the Deputy Secretary to the Treasury, told Daily Monitor yesterday that UPE funds are conditional grants and that "they are not supposed to be diverted or reallocated by anyone."<\/p>\n

"I did not know that they [UPE funds] were being diverted," he added. A Ministry of Education official, who requested not to be named because he does not have authority to speak on behalf of the ministry, said at least 300,000 pupils stand to miss out on the free primary education programme that was rolled out by the government in 1996.<\/p>\n

The government budgeted Shs700b for the Ministry of Education this financial year, 61 per cent of which is reserved for primary education, said Mr Aggrey Kibenge, the education ministry publicist.<\/p>\n

The report, which was authored by Mr Donald Winkler, a World Bank consultant and Lars Sondergaard, with support from the Ministry of Education, also cites delays by district authorities in releasing UPE money to schools, as another root for ineptitude.<\/p>\n

"There is a two months delay from the time UPE grants are released by the central government to the time they reach schools," the report said. However, it adds that; "The delay has decreased from five months as measured in 2001." The report also focused on "how much leakage is there in the school itself", stating that "about Shs314b in resources reach primary schools" every year but, "now the question is how much of these resources actually reach the pupil? The most obvious leakage at school level itself is absenteeism."<\/p>\n

Added the report; "When the headmaster and teachers have unexcused absences, pupils fail to receive their services. There is a serious problem of headmaster and teacher absenteeism in Uganda." Citing a 2004 study on teacher absenteeism, the report said the rate of teacher absenteeism in the country stood at 27 per cent. "This was considerably higher than most other countries which carried out similar surveys at the same time," the report said.<\/p>\n

"The 2006 survey finds teacher absenteeism has improved somewhat with 19 per cent of teachers having unexcused absences from school. This translates into a loss of Shs60 billion of teacher’s time, almost double the government’s financial annual contribution to Makerere University."<\/p>\n

"Absenteeism varies by teacher rank," the report said, "with 27 per cent of head teachers, 16 per cent of senior teachers and 14 per cent of junior teachers being absent."<\/p><\/div>\n

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AN estimated Shs16 billion released annually by the Ministry of Finance to run the Universal Primary Education programme is diverted by district authorities, a new report sanctioned by the Ministry of Education reveals. The report titled; ‘Efficiency of Public Education in Uganda’ attempts to answer queries about "how much leakage there is between the release … Continue reading “Officials divert billions from education”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[21098,427,1041],"class_list":["post-1077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c51-international-news","tag-s19-english","tag-international-news","tag-officials-divert-billions-from-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/praag.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1077\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.co.za\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}