Gov’t: Nursery & Primary School Teachers Who Fail To Get Degrees Will Be Fired, Replaced

Kiwanuka Kiryowa, Uganda’s Attorney General

Government has again defended the requirement for all teachers in Uganda to have degrees, saying that those who fail to obtain these qualifications in 10 years will be dropped and replaced with teachers who would have obtained the requisite qualifications.

The remarks were made by the Attorney General, Kiwanuka Kiryowa, while appearing before Parliament’s Education Committee, where he had appeared to respond to many concerns that arose during the consideration of the National Teachers Bill 2024, where many stakeholders deemed the requirement of a Bachelor’s degree for one to qualify to be registered as a teacher over the top, especially among Pre-primary teachers (Nursery teachers) as untenable.

“And I think from the assessment that has been given and done by Government, we aren’t lacking in this qualification. When this law was made, we didn’t have qualifications of teachers with degrees, now we have them. So people who are in Government now, must work to transition themselves and they have been given a period of 10years to transition. But obviously, if they don’t transition in 10years and the law remains as it is, they will be dropped because then the people who have degrees will come in,” said Kiryowa.

The Attorney General’s remarks were in response to a question posed by Irene Linda Mugisha (Fort Portal City Woman MP) who wondered why Government that hasn’t invested or doesn’t own Pre-primary schools, having left this sector to the private, is demanding to have Nursery School teachers to have Bachelor’s Degree as their minimum qualification yet nothing was mentioned in the teachers Bill on minimum pay for these teachers to enable them upgrade their qualifications.

She noted: “We are setting a standard of a Bachelor’s degree, so how much money are these private institutions going to pay? This means, we are going to shift the cost on the parents because as Government, first of all we have failed to pay our teachers. When you look at Primary Schools, we have failed to pay all teachers, up to now parents are paying teachers so now we are saying, even for Pre-primary, they should have a Bachelor’s degree and yet as Government, we have failed to own these Pre-primary schools, they are being owned by private institutions. So don’t you think we are going a little bit so hard?”

Mugisha wondered why Government doesn’t consider the option of instituting professional payment to motivate these teachers to upgrade their qualifications, for instance, ensuring that if a teacher gets a Bachelor’s degree, they will automatically be paid higher  salaries to enable them slowly upgrade their qualifications rather than forcing them.

“Because at this time, we are paying teachers Shs400,000 and you know the cost of a Bachelor’s degree. Are we really being fair to these teachers that somebody who is earning Shs400,000 will be able to go and upgrade and get a Bachelor’s degree whereby, he has to pay something like Shs2M?” said Mugisha.

Although the Attorney General admitted that Government has no investment presence in Pre-primary education, he argued that this lack of presence doesn’t mean that Government can’t regulate the sector.

“You are right, they (nursery schools) are owned by private people and yet we are setting qualifications by law because this is a regulated sector. Putting it mildly we are saying, if you want to run a Pre-primary Centre in Uganda, as a private agency, you must recruit someone who has these kind of qualifications,” said Kiryowa.

Molly Assimwe, Vice Chairperson, Education Committee pointed out that in the National Teachers Bill, continuous professional development, has been left vague on who is responsible, noting that although Government pointed out that Kyambogo University will take the lead in training Government teachers seeking to upgrade their qualifications, this will mainly benefit teachers in the Central region, and disadvantage teachers in other regions where Kyambogo University has no presence.

“I think it would be of importance, just like you have mentioned Kyambogo University to do kind of regional holiday program by Government and even online classes so that teachers find it easy to upgrade but when you mention just Kyambogo which is Kampala and will only be helpful in the Central region, I think we need to be more clear and also set up places where there is that possibility for the teachers to go and upgrade,” Asiimwe said.

She also rejected the requirement for Bachelor’s degree for Nursery School teachers noting, “I personally think what is important for the pre-primary teachers is early childhood education and not necessarily a degree in education. The Bill doesn’t mention anything to do with Early Childhood Education which is the key needed for Pre-primary and yet it mentions the degree in education which is far up there. There should be a mention of Early Childhood Education in relation to Pre-primary Education and educational leadership.”

The Attorney General however doubled down on his stance defending the need for all teachers to have Bachelor’s degree noting, “These are moving targets, today we are talking about a degree maybe tomorrow, we shall talk of a Masters Degree, or after that, we shall talk about a PhD, but what we are talking about now, is the minimum qualification. But for any requirement that will require anyone to participate in this space will be set by the National Teachers Council.”