Category: Education

{Makerere University has closed the online marks system and suspended the issuance of academic transcripts. The online marks system is used to enter and store student’s examination scores. }

Prof Barnabas Nawangwe, the Makerere University Vice Chancellor in Charge of Finance and Administration, says the drastic decision was reached after discovering that some members of staff in the academic registrar’s office were tampering with student marks.

“The university suspended issuing of transcripts because of the problem that was discovered of officers fidgeting with the results system,” he said.

Prof Nawangwe further noted that: “The University is investigating the system to ensure its total integrity and credibility of the data before we can resume issuing of transcripts.”

Prof Nawangwe said the investigation is likely to take “sometime” but the administration is doing everything they can to ensure that students can start getting their graduates transcripts again.

“The whole results system is closed. Nobody can access the system except the people (police) who are investigating the system,” he said.

On March 6, detectives from the Crime Intelligence and Investigations Department (CIID), Kireka picked up two IT specialists attached to the academic registrar’s office at Makerere University on March 6th 2017 for allegedly altering student marks following a complaint by Prof Nawangwe to the Police Chief Gen Kale Kayihura.

The two, Christopher Ntwatwa and Mike Barongo are still in police custody. The online marks system is accessed by students who view their marks by logging in using their registration number and registrars in schools and colleges who enter marks in the system.

At the school of social sciences, college of humanities and social sciences, a communication has been pinned on the noticeboard informing graduates that they cannot issue testimonial because the system’s closure.

“The school is not issuing testimonials to the graduates. They should get transcripts from the senate building. The results system is currently closed so all results related matter is at hold,” the communication reads.

A testimonial is a letter issued to graduates confirming that they have successfully completed their degree programmes. The letter is usually issued to students whose transcripts are not ready.

{{Background}}

Days to the 67th graduation of Makerere University, the academic registrar withdrew the names of 50 students who had been cleared to graduate after it was discovered that their marks had been altered.

The university also suspended, Joyce Namusoke an Assistant Registrar in the School of Forestry, Environmental and Geographical Science.

Complaints of changing marks at Makerere University have been popping up since the turn of the decade. The complaints usually emerge in January, the month when students graduate. A committee set up to investigate the alteration of marks in 2015 is yet to produce its report.

Source:Daily Monitor

{A recent survey by the Madison Insurance Company, through its Education department,the University of Nairobi (UoN) remains the most preferred choice with a 24% approval rating.}

It is closely followed by Kenyatta University at 20%.

Below on the preference table were Boston, Pwani, College of Insurance, and Mombasa Aviation institutions at 1% approval rating each.

As for the parents, most of the preferred The University of Nairobi at 49% which separated with a large difference mark with Kenyatta University at 13%.

However, at the bottom were nine universities including Maseno, Technical University of Kenya, and Oxford University with 2% approval rating each.

During ranking by number of students in public universities in 2015/16, the UoN showed to be the largest with a 22% intake, while Kabianga university being the smallest institution with a 1% intake.

In the private universities category, Mount Kenya University (MKU) registered the highest number of new students in the same period, followed by Kenya Methodist University and United States International University.

On the other end, ranking by the size of faculties offered, UoN led with 14% while MKU offered more degree programmes than any other private institution, followed by Daystar and University of East Africa Baraton.

In particulars, fees for both MKU and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) have been revised downwards in a period of five years and at times remained the same.

According to the report, most students enroll for degree courses than technical courses.

The research, released on Tuesday, February 21, was driven by the need to understand escalation in education over the last five years, understanding factors that have contributed to changes in the education patterns and understand the ways of financing higher education.

The research involved 260 participants from both public and private universities from Nairobi, Kisumu and Mombasa, within a two weeks period in January 2017.

Source:Citizen TV

{The sorry state of public schools across the country can be revealed today.

A survey conducted by the Saturday Nation presents a picture of decay, disuse and neglect in the schools.}

Pupils learn under difficult conditions while teachers struggle to create order where chaos reigns.

From Busia in the west to Kilifi at the Coast and Mandera in the North, the picture of infrastructure in public schools is shocking.

In a week long survey, we established a pervading sense of decay.

In many areas it is a case of absence of infrastructure as children sit on the floor, or stones and logs.

Open sewers, dumpsites in schools, crumbling ceilings, cracked walls and potholed floors, characterise the conditions under which many children in public schools learn.

In one case at Muthurwa Primary School in Nairobi, used nylon bags, diapers and other refuse litter a section of the playground while at Roysambu Primary School in Nairobi, street children are self-styled guards.

Puddles of a mixture of urine and water are what welcome one to a neighbouring school further down the road.

In Witu Division of Lamu County, pupils in five public primary schools learn while sitting on the floor and some on rocks.

{{NO ACTION TAKEN}}

For Kakathe, Maisha Masha, Maleli, Katsaka Kairu and Moa primary schools, pupils sit on the floor and place books on their laps when they are writing. They have no desks.

Kakathe Primary School Headteacher Juma Bakari said: “Our pupils learn in mud-walled classrooms. There are no desks and stationery; the pupils sit on the floor.”

He added: “The classrooms are few and many pupils learn under trees. At times teachers combine two or more classes and teach them in one classroom. That’s confusing and also draining for the teachers.”

At the Roysambu School in Nairobi, a stinky canal drains sewage into the school compound.

An official at the school said the waste water is discharged from several neighbouring buildings.

The Nation team saw a series of pipes directed into the canal leading into the school compound.

It was lunch time and pupils sat on smelly mounds of soil under the trees as they ate their lunch in the horrifying sight.

Discarded medicines, broken glass, razors and other dangerous elements are strewn all over the compound.

“When it is raining, the sewage covers almost half of the playground,” explained an official who refused to give his name for fear of reprisal from bosses at the Nairobi County Government.

She said many officials including those from National Environment Management Authority (Nema) and an engineer from the county government had visited the school and pledged action, but nothing had been done.

At Mathare North Primary School, a mixture of pungent smell assails the nostrils.

The school is surrounded by a dumpsite on one side, while it is fenced in by a major drainage tunnel, where the pupils stop over to play after classes.

At the school, in a detached toilet, girls elbow each other to drink from a tap.

This particular toilet is cleaner than the blocks we visited, but they are an eyesore.

{{FLOODING}}

There is no water to flush the toilets in most of the schools.

And though some of the schools have made effort to put water tanks, such cases are few and far apart.

At Muthurwa Primary School, the foul mixture oozes out into the compound below where pupils play happily.

In these public schools children are trying to learn while breathing in dusty crowded classroom.

The water in the swimming pools at two schools we visited that have the facility is green.

It is blooming with algae and is unsafe to swim in and may be a breeding ground for mosquitoes and other insects.

Although vacated, a pupil at Muthaiga Primary confessed that though they had not gone swimming this week, the bigger boys especially in Standard Seven and Eight sneak in through the fence and swim in the water.

At Kimathi Primary School, a pool attendant told us mischievously the pool water is green “because of the rain from the other day”.

Security in some of the schools like Muthurwa and Mathare North has been left to chance.

The schools do not have proper fences so they are unsecure and pose serious threats to children’s safety.

When we visited Muthurwa Primary School, the compound was flooded due to poor drainage.

Getting to the classrooms and headteacher’s office was a nightmare.

Sometimes, we were told, the flooding is worse, destroying books, desks and the classroom floors.

In a school where five pupils share one book, losing them to floods amounts to adding salt to injury.

{{NOISY ENVIRONMENT}}

The school is situated between the busy Jogoo Road, Gikomba market and Majengo slums.
Lack of a perimeter wall has led to thugs breaking in and stealing books and school items. Students also sell books to hawkers right at the gate.

At night, street families move in. They sleep in the school compound and during school holidays, they live there permanently.

“We need a perimeter wall, those hawkers outside the gate should be removed and that place cleared. And since the school is located at a somewhat low level, when it rains all the water from Muthurwa come here. They should work on the drainage,” said Mrs Jane Mwaura, the headteacher.

She added that when something is happening in the market, they can hear all of it.

During campaign periods like now, the distractions are too much.

In the other side of the city, Kibera slums, we visited Kibera Junior School, which has no field for games.

The neighbouring Olympic Primary School has 4,035 pupils with almost all classrooms catering for 100 pupils each.

Mrs Nyakundi Josephine, the deputy headteacher, said the school is congested. It needs more classes, more furniture and a computer lab.

“We also need more teachers to handle the large numbers; currently, we have only 42. We also need more toilets,” she said.

Confronted with this picture on Friday, Education PS, Dr Belio Kipsang, said the government has a continuous fund for improvement of primary and secondary schools.

Last year, he said, the ministry allocated Sh700 million for school infrastructure and expected that should have helped schools to put up decent classrooms and ablution blocks.

The sorry situation of schools in Nairobi was aptly captured in a report of a taskforce on the improvement of performance of public primary schools in the city, which had been set by Governor Evans Kidero.

{{SCARCITY OF MONEY}}

It was presented to Dr Kidero in July 2014, but when a Saturday Nation team visited the schools this week, the situation was more or less the same.

It means, the recommendations of the taskforce have not been implemented.

The taskforce report attributes this sorry state of affairs to the cancellation of capital funding to schools that started in late 1980s.

Also, the report faults the then City Council for failing to allocate resources to schools despite collective revenues from residents.

“The schools were designed according to required standards.

“However, things went wrong from the late 1980s when not only did development of new schools stall, but maintaining of existing ones also stopped.

“The schools quickly degenerated into a state of disrepair and decrepitude that continues to this today,” reads part of the report.

Education experts decried the meagre allocations for school repairs, maintenance and improvements under the Free Primary Education programme, currently set at Sh127 per child, which they say is inadequate to maintain school infrastructure.

It also not lost that part of the billions of shillings channelled to the grassroots through constituency fund that should have been used to rehabilitate and expand schools has not been used for that purpose.

Mr Wesaya Maina, the country director at Discovery Alliance, an education NGO, said the sorry state of the public school infrastructure is also an indictment of the Ministry of Education Quality Assurance and Standards Division, which he said had all but collapsed.

“While we can argue over the availability or otherwise of infrastructure funds, there is clearly no reason why schools are not inspected regularly,” said Mr Maina.

{Prof Balunywa says he is ready to meet Makerere’s management but insists Mubs doesn’t owe any money to the mother institution.}

Makerere University vice chancellor has invited Makerere University Business School (Mubs) leadership to a meeting to sort out disagreements over Shs4b functional fees arrears that threatens to block the graduation of nearly 4,000 Mubs students.

“I was not aware about the letter from the (Makerere University) bursar but I am going to consult him, then we shall have a meeting next week with the management of Mubs to have these issues resolved,” Prof Ddumba-Ssentamu said.

On his part, the Nakawa-based business institution principal, Prof Wasswa Balunywa, yesterday said he was ready to meet Makerere’s management but insisted Mubs doesn’t owe any money to the mother institution.

“We do not owe Makerere any money because whatever they demand has been remitted to their account and we have been doing this annually, so I do not understand what the (Makerere) bursar is up to,” Prof Balunywa said.

The Makerere University bursar, Mr Augustine Tamale, wrote to Prof Balunywa on January 9 informing him that failure to clear the Shs4.6b in functional fees would lead to the barring of their students from graduating at Makerere University main campus from February 22 to 24.

Prof Balunywa yesterday told Daily Monitor that Makerere University rejected their list of close to 4,000 students who have been studying at the Mubs campus.

Prof Balunywa says this is not the first time Makerere is threatening not to have their students graduate. He urged government to fast-track transforming Mubs into an independent university.

“The academic registrar of Makerere rejected the graduation list of our finalists, claiming he was ordered by the university bursar not to receive the list until we remit the claimed Shs4.6b; which is wrong and unacceptable,” Prof Balunywa said.

“No one should intimidate our students because they have cleared the functional fees and we also remitted the money to Makerere and we have evidence of payments. This is the third time they are blocking our students from graduating and this is why we want to have our own independence so that we can organise our own graduation.”

Ms Macklin Asiimwe, a students’ guild representative, said they would petition Education minister Janet Museveni over the impasse on Monday.

Higher Education minister John Muyingo has also warned Makerere University against denying innocent students the opportunity to graduate when they could have completed their payments.

“The government will not allow students fall victim to the games the two institutions are playing. If the two institutions have issues, they should involve the government and we shall indeed come in,” Dr Muyingo advised.