The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Ministry of Education and Sports has threatened to withhold capitation grants for public schools and education institutions, which fail to finalize the online registration of learners.
In April this year, the Ministry of Education and Sports rolled out the re-developed Education Management Information System (EMIS) in collaboration with the National Identification and Registration Authority-NIRA, with the aim of giving each learner a unique identification number.
The process which is conducted in both public and private institutions at all levels of learning, is intended to among other things help ease the tracking of the learners’ performance even if they change schools, and improve data management in the education sector. However, a cross-section of schools is yet to capture and upload all learner’s data on the EMIS portal.
In a recent circular, the ministry informed schools to complete the exercise by September 30, but nothing has changed. Now, the ministry says they are going to make one final extension. Ketty Lamaro, the Permanent Secretary of the Education Ministry, says that there will be punitive measures for those who fail to upload the required data.
“…I inform you that failure to comply with the above deadline will attract punitive measures as detailed below, suspension of capitation grants for government education institutions,” Lamaro said in a circular addressed to all heads of education institutions.
Unconfirmed reports indicate that many government schools have not only failed to submit the necessary data, but also don’t have any data to provide. In a recent engagement, Ministry of Education officials expressed concern that some schools which had inflated enrollment numbers have been cornered.
“Schools with exaggerated enrollment counts undoubtedly lack the necessary data to upload. Since this exercise is also being conducted in private schools, borrowing students from nearby private schools for headcounts and other activities is no longer an option,” one of the officials said in an informal conversation with our reporter.
Vicent Ssozzi, the Assistant Commissioner Statistics, Monitoring, and Evaluation in the Ministry of Education notes that after the registration process, the ministry has lined-up other activities, which will certainly point out issues like mismatches in EMIS online registration data and other datasets that have been available including those from the headcounts among others.
Over the years, the ministry has been struggling to get accurate data on learners since the old EMIS tracker used the school census where they would distribute questionnaires to schools. However, this approach posed several challenges such as the inflation of learners in government schools to get more capitation grants.
In the meantime, a number of schools that have not yet uploaded data have over time attributed the delay to equipment shortages and glitches in the EMIS system. According to Ssozi, the ministry has advised anyone facing additional difficulties with the system to call for assistance directly.
He also added that this can be solved on a case-by-case basis because in his opinion, the majority of difficulties relate to system utilization rather than its functionality.
He did however add that there were some unexpected issues with the initiative, such as the equipment’s availability, which they will be working to resolve in the future in conjunction with local governments and NIRA.
Apart from government schools, the ministry also warns that private schools would have their licenses canceled if they fail to upload the necessary data in time.
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