Remarks at International Day of Education Commemoration

The Honourable Minister of State for Higher Education

Government Officials

UN Heads of Agencies

Civil Society and Private Sector representatives

Teachers, Students and Pupils

Ladies and Gentlemen

I bring warm greetings from the UN family in Uganda and am really honored to be with you all today to collectively acknowledge and celebrate the importance of education for development aspirations.  

Without an inclusive, equitable and quality education facilitating lifelong opportunities for all, no country will succeed in breaking the cycle of poverty that is leaving millions of children, youth and adults behind.  

We have just been through two extremely difficult years. The Pandemic continues to be hard on absolutely everybody, on every sector, on the entire country. Undoubtably however, one of the worst hit sectors has been education and among those in the population who have suffered most has been our children, our students, their teachers and families.

Ugandan schools were closed since March 2020 for 84 weeks. Uganda had to close schools in order to save lives. It was a tough decision, especially considering the massive social costs this has entailed.  

While the Government and people of Uganda have over the decades worked very hard to improve education in Uganda with significant and bold steps such as universal primary education, that trajectory of progress has now stalled. We have taken a step or two back in the last two years. We know that not all the children who were in school in March 2020 have returned to school. The figure I have heard – from an NPA study - is that we are likely to be missing 30% as we reopen and go back to classes. But of course we will need a few more weeks to confirm these figures…    

For those back in class, we know there will be a lot of learning and catching up to do.  

For those not back in the classroom, we know there will be an impact on their individual opportunities further downstream – and so an impact on our future national fortunes as well…. The national trajectory in made up of the sum of all the individual trajectories…

We know our female adolescent learners have borne some of the worst consequences. An estimate * full 607,777 have become mothers. Many more have suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse.  This situation, which is now being talked about nationally, is really a grave development concern, I – like everyone else has followed the discussions in the media and the arguments on both sides of the aisles. And for my part, while the arrival of babies are blessings, the circumstances in which we bring children into the world matters greatly for the collective. Children having children - in this magnitude -  cannot be a desirable and joyous occurrence.  Children having children – in this magnitude -  indicates massive failures on our collective part. And despite the individual tragic stories at the mother/child/family/community level – the collective overall story at the national level is damming. Uganda will likely pay a very big price for all these children a few decades down the line and reap dynamics that will further drive cultural, economic, security problems. These are not small challenges for any country to confront.

And to minimize the future price tag of these pregnancies and births, investments will need to be made now. We need to help the mothers, we need to help the families, we need to help the communities take care of these babies and their mothers now. We need to help all schools be a more welcoming place for adolescent mothers to continue their education. We can assume that teen pregnancy is not a rational choice. And while consequences have to be borne, while we recognize this is not a desirable route for any adolescent to embark upon and therefore try to prevent this trend from continuing, - as a society we cannot allow the consequences to further compound the problem.   

And all these new pandemic induced challenges of course compound the previous problems of the education system that were being progressively worked on… issues such as completion rates in primary, transition to secondary – completion rates of secondary and transition to tertiary.

The United Nations and partner generally, have been working with the Government on continuity of learning and safe school re-opening for the last two years. The UN’s support included sharing of global knowledge and best practices, provision of self-learning materials, radio and TV lessons for continuity of learning and parenting education. UNICEF supported the Government formulate the School Re-opening Strategy and UNFPA supported the continuation of adolescents to access Sexuality Education (SE) information and services. The School Re-opening Strategy will focus on school-based surveillance for early identification, reporting, and management of emerging COVID-19 cases in schools, and the secondary focus will be on mental health and psychosocial (MHPSS) wellbeing training to support teachers and children to readjust. These are critical activities which can have a lasting impact on the system, enabling it to remain open and continue to provide safe and quality education for our students.  

In his message for International Education Day, UN Secretary-General António Guterres notes the current global crisis we are in regarding education. The challenges in Uganda are not Uganda’s alone, Uganda shares many similarities in her challenges with others. The Secretary general has proposed to convene a global conversation on Transforming Education later this year. The Summit will be the first time that world leaders, young people and all education stakeholders come together to consider these fundamental questions.

Perhaps we should seize the opportunity here in Uganda – with schools having  re-opened, us all still figuring out pathways to the other side of this pandemic, …perhaps we could seize the opportunity to have a national conversation around education. And collectively look at how we can effectively deal with the new challenges we now have in the sector, and the old challenges, how we make the sector more resilient to future shocks, how we ensure that schools deliver the right skills and values, how we get a whole of Government/ whole of society support towards education and better harness the support of families, communities, how we deal with the resources question  etc. Look at how education can better contribute towards the overall recovery needed.    

I hope this resonates with other national stakeholders. And if yes, the UN family will happily support this endeavor.

I pledge our commitment to continue supporting the Education Sector through our partnership with the Government of Uganda through implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework for Uganda (2021-2025) in support of the third National Development Plan (NDP III) towards the achievement of Uganda Vision 2040.

As I conclude, I would like to thank Incredible Youth International and UNESCO for organising this event that has brought together key stakeholders from the education sector in Uganda.

Thank You and look forward to working with all of you.