Big Interview: Schools should be considerate as learners return, says UNATU boss

As schools reopen on January 10, there are various concerns that have been raised regarding teachers’ welfare and morale, their reunion with students among others.

Speaking to The Nile Post, Filbert Baguma, the general secretary of the Uganda National Teachers’ Union (UNATU) said there is need to look at the strategies that can fit the current situation without worsening it.

Excerpts below:

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How has Covid-19 impacted on the learners during the lockdown?

Covid-19 has affected the parents, guardians and the learners. It has affected the teachers. The only difference is the degree. The learners have been away from schools for almost two years, this simply means that the teaching learning process has not been taking place.

We have reports indicating that so many girls have been defiled, so many girls have been impregnated. The boys have gone into child labour, others have gone into businesses and there are those that their parents took them for skills development but as such, they have since realised they can make money and they are thinking of not returning to schools.

How best can the government support learners who were greatly affected by the pandemic to continue with their studies?

We need to mobilise them and make sure we identify where they are and ensure that they come back to school. Good enough the government has come with the regulation to guide on the re-entry of those who are pregnant and those who have delivered. They are allowed to come back to schools and be given a second chance to continue with their studies.

These are innocent children, they didn’t go to look for these pregnancies, majority of them were defiled because of idleness as a result of lockdown.

Teachers have on several times raised the issues regarding their welfare. How can this be improved this time round?

We need to understand that not all teachers are going to come back, there are teachers who have crossed to other sectors of the economy and are doing other things completely. There are those who have realized that they can make more than what they earned as salary during the lockdown.

However, there are those who have realised that these businesses they have started are going to act as supplementary to the salaries which they get .Today nobody can tell you ,how many teachers are going to come back.

The call we are making is that teachers should get back and support the teaching learning process because the learners need them. It will be unfortunate if we find scenarios where learners report and there are no teachers to attend to them after these long periods.

What really happened to the Shs 20 billion that was promised by the president to teachers in private schools?They have never received it.

The teachers’ money came with so many strings attached. Because it was coming from the consolidated fund, it must be received by a legal entity .

There was no legal entity for the private teachers .They went through a series of meetings trying to put in place a committee.

The committee was formed but when the committee was almost finalising,the process and going towards launching the distribution of the money, then other associations came up and said, we are not comfortable with this arrangement, so now that brought the process to a hold and the government listened to them .

Right now that is where they are and that is why the teachers from the private sector up to date did get the money.

How best can the learners be helped having spent almost two years at home? Haven’t they forgotten everything?

We have three categories of learners; we have learners who have never stopped learning from 20th March 2020 because they come from well-off families and the parents and guardians have supported them to continuously study. There are those who benefited, especially those in peri-urban and urban areas .

They benefited from TV lessons, radio lessons and some accessed the print materials but remember TV signals and radio signals could not reach everywhere.

There is an unfortunate group for them, they stopped on 19th March 2020 and they are going to resume on 10th.

All these categories are transiting to the next level. It is incumbent upon the teachers to sit with their administrators and lay out a strategy on how to handle the situation.

Government warned that teachers who are not vaccinated will not be allowed in class .What do you think about that?

Teachers know they have a life to protect so there is no reason why they should not get vaccinated. The vaccination itself started with a lot of negativity but we have seen countries which are vaccinated.

Some are getting back to lockdowns while others are moving on. You see crowds without even masks which means vaccination has some levels of protection.

So I encourage the teachers to go and get vaccinated including the learners who are 18 years and above plus the support staff and non-teaching staff within the schools.

The government has on several occasions said it has no money to support private schools that have been hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. What is the fate of these schools?

Government should have rendered a hand to these schools because the schools support the government in the provision of the education which is a responsibility of the government .It will be unfortunate if these schools close.

How can parents who had cleared their tuition before second lockdown be helped as schools reopen?

The Ministry has come and pronounced itself over the matter but what we want to see is the ministry is following up on the circulars and making sure that implementation is done because there are those learners who had just reported one week and the school was closed and they had paid school fees.

The school administrators and owners need to know that these parents were equally affected. They don’t have funds available for that purpose, and therefore we should have a win-win situation so that we don’t take it as a business and cheat the parents who had just paid before the lockdown.

There are claims that UNATU has been captured by the state .How true is this?

You see even if you do something in darkness, one morning it comes to light. So whoever claims should have the burden of proof .UNATU is an independent institution .Now you have come here, is this a government building? This is an independent institution and we do our work independently.