.

A CASE STUDY OF THE UGANDAN EDUCATION SYSTEM AND

HOW IT CAN BE IMPROVED USING THE DRUCKERIAN APPROACH
TO ADAPT TO A WORLD IN FLUX.

31-May-24
INTRODUCTION
The greatest source of turbulence in any developing country is its National Governance and
Uganda is no exception to the rule. The quality of a country’s leadership is essential in its
stability and economic growth..

Uganda is a small land locked country in Sub Saharan Africa with one of the world’s
youngest populations in the world. According to UNICEF, 44% of Ugandan Citizens are
under the age of 14 years.1This is an opportunity for the Ugandan government to heavily
invest in this human capital of children and young adults to enhance their access to gainful
employment as well as meaningful business startups.

Uganda is also the most entrepreneurial country in the world. However many of these
businesses do not live long enough to celebrate their first birthdays.2Peter Drucker in his
book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, said, “In an entrepreneurial society individuals face a
tremendous challenge, a challenge they need to exploit as an opportunity: the need for
continuous learning and relearning.”3 Many Ugandan entrepreneurs have not been lucky
enough to start their enterprises from a point of knowledge, for them, it is more about
“getting the day’s bread” as opposed to achieving long term growth and expansion. For many
this lack of information is what stands between them and operating highly successful
businesses.

Education is a great equalizer and driver of upward social mobility; with the proper education
structures in place the children of tomorrow will be guaranteed a place in the global village.

In this essay I discuss the history of the Ugandan education system and how the government
of Uganda can improve it and use it as a tool to improve the quality of the population, helping
them to better adapt to a world in flux which in turn will spur economic development

1
1 Unicef, “Unicef-Keeping children Alive,Learning and Safe”, Who we are|Unicef Uganda.
https://www.unicef.org/uganda/who-we-are

2
Anna,Patton”,Uganda is the land of entrepreneurs but how many startups survive?”,The Guardian February
16th 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/feb/16/uganda-
is-a-land-of-entrepreneurs-but-how-many-startups-survive

3
Drucker, Peter. Innovation and entrepreneurship: Practice and principles, Boston, MA: Butterworth
Heinemann, 1985

2
A HISTORY OF UGANDA’S EDUCATION SYSTEM

Education in Uganda was first introduced by the missionaries in the 1880s.Most of the
schools taught basic reading and writing including religion. In 1922 the Phelps Stokes fund
report recommended government involvement in the education sector. This gave birth to the
first Department of Education and a director for a African studies was appointed.4

Government started playing an active role of regulating the education sector, which was
rapidly growing and expanding in the mid 1950s to 1960s. By the time Uganda got
Independence on the 9th of October 1962, a flourishing economy and education sector had
been realized. However this was to be short-lived as is with most developing
countries ,Uganda was thrown in an almost two decade long civil unrest that left most of its
sectors in shambles, the Education sector was not spared.

In the 1970s the Government Educational Plan was not implemented due to the nature of
leadership Uganda had at that time. A man power vacuum had been created by the expulsion
of Indians from the country who made up a sizable portion of Uganda’s educated work force.
Some local teachers as well fled to exile due to a general unstable political and economic
climate in Uganda
In 1986 the National Resistance Army-NRA captured power and the new government
embarked on an ambitious process to revamp the education system that was falling apart. An
Education Policy Review Commission was organized.

This spearheaded major education policy changes, which eventually led to the creation of the
Universal Primary Education (UPE) which offered free education for primary going children
and in recent years the Universal Secondary School education (USE) which offers free
education for secondary school going children.
Currently, Education and training in Uganda is governed by the Education Act and other
related Acts of Parliament, including University Act, Tertiary institutions Act various other
Acts and Charters for Universities.

4
David.R.Evans and W Senteza Kajubi: Education Policy Formation in Uganda: Continuity amidst Change.
University of Massachusetts Amherst,1994

3
 EDUCATING FOR THE INFORMATION AGE: WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Ugandan education is still stuck in the industrial age model of education where the teacher is
the primary source of knowledge, hence making it a teacher centric model of learning. .The
idea of self education especially through play is mostly unheard of and a premise of the
International curriculum based schools. Students take lectures and instructions from teachers
a model similar to the industrial age period factory workers.

Most parents are interested in how much information a school can pump into their children,
and, this is gauged with how well the student performs on their exams .The release of the
various National level examination results is always greeted with much anticipation as
parents want to lord it over their peers, if their children appear in the National News as top
performers. Schools use this as a marketing point for new enrollments as well.

Unfortunately many of the top performing students face challenges at the next education
levels and do not excel as much. Analysis of the 2019 Uganda Certificate of Education shows
that many Primary Leaving Examinations stars did not make it among the top grades5. This is
because many of them only excelled through cram work, a method of information retention in
large volumes within a short amount of time, or even examination malpractices like cheating,
since some schools go to untold lengths to maintain their ranking among Top Performing
schools in the country. As recently as last year the Uganda National Examinations board
recorded 25 cases of examination malpractices both at the Uganda Certificate Education
Level (UCE) and the Primary Leaving Education level (PLE)6

All these are indicators of what is wrong with our education and give policy makers a
starting point from which the following recommendations , can be made to improve the
education sector;

i.A curriculum Overhaul

A curriculum overhaul is important because it incorporates learning materials that are in sync
with the current times ,thus avoiding giving learners obsolete knowledge they will have no
use for several years down the road. In today’s rapidly changing world attention should also

5
New Vision ,Why Star Students fail to keep top grades; New Vision ,February 27th 2020.
https://www.newvision.co.ug/news/1515612/star-students-fail-grades.

6
Fahim Muyingo, UNEB registers 25 cases of examinations malpractice during National exams; Charma News,
November,20th 2023 . https://charmarnews.com/uneb-registers-25-cases-of-malpractice-during-national-
exams.

4
be given to the passion economy, since not every learner is cut out for the job market or the
proverbial office jobs. Children with learning disabilities like dyslexia and dyscalculia and
other learning disabilities should be taken into consideration as well. In Uganda today, there
is not a single National school that takes into account learning disabilities; children are
labeled daft and their strengths are not nurtured. .A curriculum change helps learners to get a
more balanced, relevant and immersive education experience.

ii Increase Funding of the sector.

Government should increase the money allocated to the education sector during the budgeting
process. This is because most of the government aided schools are providing very poor
education to learners because they cannot afford to hire good quality teachers and also put up
proper infrastructure to properly run the schools. Most of these schools especially the ones
offering Universal Primary Education register the highest number of school dropouts.
Learners would rather stay at home than attend school where they will starve the whole day
because the schools cannot afford to provide them with meals7. Teachers do not regularly
show up as well, sometimes they are on strike due to delayed payments or low salaries.
Therefore as Uganda is positioning itself to take a leap into the information age, there are
certain setbacks that can only be resolved with a deliberate improvement in the support
allocated to the sector.

ii Human Capital Development.

Abdul Kalam once said, “Teaching is a noble profession,” however that does not ring true for
majority of teachers in Uganda. Teaching is a reserve of academic failures as some people
would say, or a qualification for people from poor families’8.Going to a teacher training
college in Uganda is cheaper than pursuing a course at the university .However, a bachelor in
Education degree at the University is one of the cheapest and has some of the lowest entry
points. This shows the quality of teachers being churned out; they have no passion for
teaching but only view it as a way out of poverty. Government should improve the quality of
teachers being given the mandate to train and be in charge of education by improving the

7
Bill Oketch: Hunger pushes over thousands of children out of school in Oyam,Daily Monitor, March 11th 2024.
https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/national/hunger-pushes-over-thousands-of-children-out-of-school-
in-oyam-4552114.

8
Daily Monitor: Doom looms as government admits failures in teaching profession, Daily Monitor .February
16th 2011. https://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1109134/-/c53wlkz/-/index.html

5
desirability of Education as a profession. Human capital development starts from the teacher
training process, how the teachers are taught to pass on knowledge, what skills they are
armed with as well as remuneration to reduce the amount of teachers abandoning the
profession in search of greener pastures. A good quality well rounded teacher will find it
easier to adopt a new curriculum and new adopt to the changing trends of the world.

iv Introduction and assimilation of balanced technology in the sector.

The use of Information and Technology as a tool of education has been adopted world over as
a very critical part of learning processes. During the Covid -19 pandemic many schools in the
world were able to continue their operations online and learners did not lose valuable time to
the lockdown. Sadly, the same cannot be said for majority of Ugandan schools that had to
totally put a pause to learning because they lacked the infrastructure to continue lessons
online. The digital inequalities between rural schools and urban schools have always been
present but during the pandemic, the extent at which they are widespread was exposed.9
Learners from rural schools were the most affected during the lock down as they did not have
access to infrastructure to facilitate the distance learning; like internet, computers or even
mobile phones. Introduction of technology in learning offers students endless sources of
knowledge beyond the classroom, giving them a chance at endless possibilities.

v. Good governance and management structures

As we established in the essay introduction, the single biggest source of turbulence in a
developing country is National Governance. Good governance brings about positive
outcomes in a country like political and economic stability; the reverse is also true.
Government should put in place sound policy structures to guide the management processes
of the Education Sector. One of the main reasons why the Ugandan education sector is
lagging behind is the corruption in the Education ministry and other supporting ministries.
There is gross mis-appropriation of funds and outright theft of money meant for the sector
activities like building class room blocks, paying teachers, curriculum development and other
activities. Just as recently as 2021 ,nine people were arrested for the embezzlement of ugx
11,000,000,000 meant for teachers.10This is an indication that government needs to come up
9
Ivan Nahurira Barekye and Godfrey JethroNsubuga,Covid-19 and Uganda’s Education Sector, New Vision ,July
28th 2021. https://www.newvision.co.ug/category/blogs/covid-19-and-ugandas-education-sector-NV_110265

10
URN ,9 arrested over embezzlement of teachers’ shs 11 bn, The Observer ,September 4th 2021.
https://observer.ug/news/headlines/71095-9-arrested-over-embezzlement-of-teachers-shs-11bn

6
with strict rules and regulations to foster better management of programs and funds in the
sector

PETER DRUCKER AS EDUCATION MINISTER; WHY THE SECTOR WOULD

THRIVE.

 Peter Drucker realized that learning was a lifelong process for both the teacher and the
student and therefore for any economy to be superior to another, a lot of investment
had to be made into the education of the work force. He for saw that work that
required the use of brute force was on the decline and jobs that needed critical
thinking were on the rise; Therefore countries had to train and retrain their work force
to be able to keep up with the flux.11 .This is important for Uganda’s education sector
which is severely underfunded and whatever little is available gets misappropriated.

 Peter Drucker believed that adapting a flux mindset and continuous innovation is what
helps a company or country to remain competitive in a changing world12. The world
globally is changing and calls for totally different approaches to work and ways of
thinking. If Drucker was in charge of the Ugandan Education Sector, adapting to the
changing world trends would be easy since the necessary structures to make this
seamless would have been put in place.

 Drucker’s management principles of decentralization, object driven management and

proper remuneration of knowledge workers 13 is a sure way of improving performance
of employees in the education sector as well building their confidence and trust in the
system at large. Drucker said, knowledge workers view themselves as professionals
who require a performance based organization as opposed to an authority based one.
They also want to accomplish an extra ordinary day’s work and earn a high salary
while at it. With this knowledge, there is no way Drucker would fail at the helm of the
Education Ministry, this is because a teacher would be treated the same as a doctor
since they are all knowledge workers. The positive outcomes of this would include
but not limited to,
11
Drucker,F Peter: The Age of Discontinuity, Guidelines to our changing society: New York, Harper and
Row,1969.
12
Drucker .F.Peter. Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Practice and Principles, Boston, Heinemann ,1985
13
Drucker.F Peter. The Practice of Management, New York, Harper and Row,1954

7
 1. Increased job satisfaction which will in turn spur quality output from the teachers
2. Reduced rate of teacher turn over in schools.
3. Reduced incidences of corruption and embezzlement of funds meant for sector
activities.

 Peter Drucker knew the importance of having the right people doing a job or task. He
encouraged companies to put their best people on their best tasks or opportunities.
This would come in handy in helping the education sector thrive. This is because only
the best brains and personnel would be given the opportunity to help the ministry to
achieve the sector’s goal

In Conclusion;

A huge global transformation is taking place in education, training and learning world over;
driven by the changing nature of work and the rise of the information and digital age. The
Ugandan government ought to recognize this and adopt a flux mindset in its policy
formulations. As discussed in the essay above, government ought to take into account the
need for creating equitable and quality education, as well as continuously innovating to stay
relevant in these changing times.