The secondary science teachers in government schools, under the umbrella body of Uganda Professional Science Teachers’ Union-UPSTU, have commenced their industrial action demanding enhancements of their salaries.
The students who are detained at Masaka Central Police station were arrested on Tuesday after they conducted a drive through Masaka town together with the various candidates.
Early this month, Namatende was transferred to Jinja School of Nursing and Midwifery but declined to prepare her handover report and vacate the office for the new Bursar.
Each of the schools received a 6,000-litre water tank to support them during the dry seasons and save the pupils from walking long distances to fetch water.
Patrick Sseremba, the School headteacher says that despite the financial constraints, the teachers have used the school reopening as an opportunity to raise several demands some of which he says are unrealistic at the moment.
According to the statement, although the religious leaders are not completely opposed to the return of pregnant and breastfeeding student mothers to schools, they have reservations about how the policy will appropriately be executed in an environment that has other learners who are yet to embark on a journey to parenthood or sexually abused
A number of private secondary school headteachers told Uganda Radio Network that many parents are sending their children back to schools without the required scholastic materials, like books and pens, while some have only basic personal requirements.
Steven Asiimwe, the Masaka City Resident Commission, who was part of the school inspection team, says that the absentee teachers are keeping them in doubt of whether they will actually return when the schools reopen on Monday.
Anne Florence Nakabuye, the in-charge of Misanvu Special Needs Education Unit which operates under Misanvu Demonstration Primary School in Bukomansimbi district argues that automatic promotion is illogical to their learners who largely remained unattended to in the entire the Covid-19 lockdown period.
Speaking to the congregation after Christmas Mass in Our Lady all Sorrows Cathedral Kitovu; at the seat of Masaka diocese, Mpuuga contradicted government’s position that banned parents from contributing any monies to school as they reopen.
. According to Ssematimba, this was meant to teach pupils how to optimally and innovatively utilize the available land resources around them to sustain themselves outside the formal employment sector.
While many people are struggling to recover from the effects of the COVID-19, the story is different for Abbey Lukyamuzi, a youth living with disability in Masaka town, who has ventured into the reproduction and distribution of learners' home-school material in his area.
According to Nangoobi, the doctors at the Uganda Heart Institute (UHI) recommended surgery for Mudavid to live. They add that the operation must be done within a few weeks since delays put his life at stake.
According to the teachers, with the absence of reliable home-based study materials for learners with special needs especially those who study in the sign-language model, many of them have been demotivated and there is a likelihood that a big number may not return to school.
The obtained capacity is a result of a public-private the partnership initiated in 2014, to establish a hi-tech subsidiary University of Science and Technology in Uganda, which will use Masaka Hospital as its training and practising station for specialized medical services.
The proprietors say that they are currently on the verge of losing their properties over failure to pay back the loans they obtained to run the schools.
However, access into compounds of the defiant schools is currently highly restricted from any suspicious visitors who have to undergo thorough questioning about their intentions and indeed some are repulsed.
A number of schools visited by URN in Masaka and Bukomansimbi districts have replaced all the social behavioural messages with Covid-19 prevention messages.
By Wednesday out of over 200 education institutions distributed across Masaka district, the assessment team had inspected 174 centers, and had only issued 100 certificates of compliance to schools that passed the compliance tests.
