Parents rail against holiday work

Whenever children break off for holidays, parents hope they will spend valuable time with them and teach them what they don't learn at school.

Yet increasingly, this has become impossible.

Many schools now load pupils with holiday work which affords them little tile to learn house work.

Parents say they are denied time with their children since they spend most of the time at school and during holidays they are occupied with holiday work.

"Giving our children holiday package is not bad because children are supposed to remember what they studied during the school term, but when it’s too much, it becomes a burden because holiday is the only time we have with our children to teach them house work, check their behavior and a lot more," said Daudi Lubega Sseguya the principal of Kibuli Primary Teachers’ College.

Lubega said as tutors they train teachers and prepare them to teach primary school children and among what they emphasise most is giving learners class work exercise to test their brains and some homework which gives them time to learn other things.

He noted that the emerging of examinations bureaus has also become a problem where schools buy already set exams and they are competing amongst themselves.

He said the commercialisation of education is killing the sector because a lot is being done in the name of having better grades.

To the teachers, there is a lot of competition among schools especially private schools where parents look at aggregate four as the only grade that can push a child to a good secondary school.

This is cemented by the so called first world schools that only take students who have scored Four to Five aggregate.