Science teacher shortage and the moonlighting culture: The pathology of the teacher labour market in Uganda

International Journal of Educational Development 36 (2014) 72–80

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International Journal of Educational Development journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedudev

Science teacher shortage and the moonlighting culture: The pathology of the teacher labour market in Uganda James Urwick a,*, Sarah Kisa b a b

Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda Kyambogo University, Kampala, Uganda

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Development Educational policy Mathematics teachers Science teachers Uganda

The Ugandan Government promotes the rapid expansion of secondary education and requires an emphasis on mathematics and science subjects at that level, but has a ‘‘market’’ approach to the recruitment of teachers. This study uses both national and local evidence to demonstrate that, not only are the teachers of these subjects too few for the policies to be effective, but many of them are employed in more than one school, and some in other work. This ‘‘moonlighting’’ trend, which contributes to problems of poor service, is seen as part of a questionable tendency to commercialise teaching. Policy changes and practical steps are suggested in order to regulate and reduce moonlighting. ß 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Background and rationale This study illustrates the tensions between two educational agendas that have been adopted widely in low-income countries. On the one hand, governments seek to widen access to primary and secondary education, in keeping with the goals of the Education for All movement. On the other hand, they seek to promote scientific and technological education in order to enhance national economic prospects. Both agendas have some political appeal internally and both have been encouraged by international agencies. But lack of attention to the dilemmas involved, combined with a less than rigorous appraisal of the resources needed, can lead to a widening gap between the objectives and the actual delivery of education. In response to perceived global advances in knowledge, the Government of Uganda initiated a Science and Technology Innovation Policy in 1994. Within this general framework, it has taken some measures since 2005 intended to prioritise the study of mathematics and science in secondary and tertiary education. These measures have been driven by a perception that the results in these subjects, especially in the Uganda Certificate of Education (O level), are poor and that relatively few students enter degree programmes in the sciences. The measures taken include, firstly, a requirement that all students in lower secondary education study three natural sciences (biology, chemistry and physics) throughout the cycle; secondly, provision of a new, in-service training programme

* Corresponding author. Present address: Crossways, Merrivales Lane, Bloxham, Banbury OX15 4ER, UK. E-mail address: [email protected] (J. Urwick). 0738-0593/$ – see front matter ß 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2013.11.004

(SESEMAT) for secondary level teachers of mathematics and science and, thirdly, a quota of 75 per cent for scientific and technological fields of study in the government sponsorship of students in first degree programmes. The policy of three compulsory sciences up to O level is somewhat at variance with the ideas of the Education Sector Strategic Plan of 2004–2015 (MOES, 2004), which advocates a simplified curriculum at the lower secondary level, and it is very ambitious in the context of rapid expansion of secondary education. The expansion has been intensified since 2007 by the ‘‘Universal Secondary Education’’ (USE) programme, which has reduced the financial barriers to attendance by students from poorer backgrounds. The USE policy was adopted with little regard for available resources (see Chapman et al., 2010, pp. 77–78). The combination of these various policies has considerably increased the demands, both quantitative and qualitative, on the teaching of the natural sciences at the lower secondary level. Mathematics too comes under pressure because of its foundational role in the sciences. The demands on teaching at higher levels are likely to rise also in response to the sponsorship quota mentioned above. But a missing element in this scenario is national planning of the supply of teachers for mathematics and science. While shortages of secondary level teachers in these subjects are a common problem internationally, Uganda seems to represent a notable case of failure to tackle them systematically. Partly as a result, market mechanisms strongly influence the way in which teachers are distributed and the capacity of schools to implement the curriculum. An important element in this situation is ‘‘moonlighting’’ by teachers: their simultaneous employment in more than one school and also in non-teaching work. While this phenomenon occurs

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widely at the secondary and tertiary levels in Uganda and probably elsewhere, teachers of secondary mathematics and natural science are in relatively high demand and therefore illustrate it well. Most of the moonlighting is actually done in broad daylight, as teachers allocate specific days or half-days to different schools. The research on which this discussion is based was prompted by the findings of a recent research project on teacher effectiveness in secondary school mathematics and science in Uganda (Centre for Global Development through Education, 2011), which include some limited evidence, in specific clusters of schools, of the teacher shortage problem and sheds light on its implications for classroom processes. The authors, as participants in the latter project, saw the need to study this particular problem in greater depth. The study focuses on teachers of four school subjects—biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics—and for convenience the term, ‘‘science teachers’’ will be used to describe them.1 2. Purpose and structure of the study The general purpose of the study is to explore the dimensions, circumstances and implications of the science teacher shortage in secondary education, with due attention to teachers’ multiple employment (moonlighting). Both the pattern of supply and demand affecting science teachers at the national level, and the way in which teachers are actually deployed at more local levels, are considered. The study seeks to clarify the ways in which employers’ practices, the labour market, working conditions and individual preferences influence the employment and work patterns of science teachers. The issues that arise from the findings, relating to the management of the secondary education system, are then considered. In the next section a conceptual framework is presented, based on relevant literature, for understanding the connections between national policies, the distribution of teachers, the manner in which education is delivered and learning outcomes. This framework is wider than the scope of the findings, but provides a context for them. The research methods are described briefly and the evidence is then discussed in three stages. Firstly, an analysis of national and regional data is used to show the extent of the science teacher shortage and some correlates of the shortage. Secondly, the general prevalence of multiple teaching appointments is illustrated with national data. Thirdly, evidence from a local area is used to illustrate science teachers’ multiple work commitments, income patterns and workloads. Attention is then drawn to the partially cyclical nature of the teacher shortage and to the ways in which the shortage interacts with other influences on learning. Lastly, the wider implications of the findings are outlined and some measures to alleviate the situation are suggested. 3. Concepts and relevant literature It has already been mentioned that Uganda’s policies of rapid expansion of secondary education and of making three sciences compulsory up to O level have, in combination, increased the demand for science teachers. A situation of rapid expansion and of constrained public expenditure also makes it more difficult for a low-income country to pay teachers adequately (Lewin, 2008) and to attract science graduates into teaching rather than industrial or commercial employment. This is exactly the situation in Uganda, where an incentive allowance for science teachers, approved in principle in 2009, had still not been implemented two years later.2 1 This demarcation is convenient partly because secondary level teachers in Uganda are expected to specialise in two subjects and the combinations of (1) biology and chemistry and (2) mathematics and physics are more common than any other combinations involving these subjects. Further details are given below. 2 Information from a teachers’ union representative interviewed.

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The planning of the teaching force for a given level of education could in principle be attempted at the national level, using enrolment trends, pupil–teacher ratios, school staffing models and teacher attrition data to estimate ‘‘demand’’, while ‘‘supply’’ is planned mainly through the provision of pre-service teacher education and of pay that is sufficient to retain those who are trained. Williams (1979) sets out a convenient methodology for this kind of centralised planning, which is useful especially at times of rapid expansion of enrolment or demographic change. However, in addition to the problem of limited national capacity for such planning, there is considerable variation, among low-income countries, in the extent to which teacher recruitment is centralised or localised (Gaynor, 2005; Bennell and Akyeampong, 2007, pp. 48–49; Urwick, 2011). In Uganda, where there is a mixture of public and private ownership and funding of schools, teacher recruitment is left mainly to district authorities in the case of government schools and to proprietors in the case of private schools. In principle governments can nevertheless monitor the recruitment, payment and management of teachers in order to limit inequalities of supply and standards. But their capacity for such governance (Grindle, 2007) is a relevant issue, especially where multiple agencies are involved. The combination of a shortage of teachers and of low pay creates a situation where their scarcity value may be exploited through supplementary employment. One possible outcome is the engagement of teachers in private tutoring, on which considerable research has been done (e.g. Bray, 2007; Sobhy, 2012) and of which Hallak and Poisson (2007) provide an overview. But in the case of Uganda the characteristic outcome takes a different form: as we have stated, many secondary level teachers (especially science teachers) work in more than one school, through locally negotiated arrangements. Little research has been done on this pattern of multiple teaching appointments. Hallak and Poisson (2007) simply recognise that secondary employment is often related to low or irregular pay for the main job (pp. 161, 166). Bennell and Akyeampong (2007) mention the prevalence of secondary employment among teachers in some African and South Asian countries, but focus attention on private tutoring and farming activities (pp. 51–55). Teacher shortages tend to make class sizes larger and to reduce the ‘‘time on task’’ for students. Comments will be made on the links between these two variables and learning outcomes. First, however, it is important to note that moonlighting may be expected to reinforce the undesirable effects of a teacher shortage in both respects, In some situations, class sizes can be reduced by increasing teachers’ contact time: but it is unlikely that teachers who are moonlighting would wish to increase their contact time for no extra pay. This implies that, in science practical lessons, there would be less opportunity for student initiative and ‘‘guided enquiry’’ (McComas, 2005), as opposed to teacher demonstration. With regard to time on task, such teachers would not go out of their way to reschedule lessons that were cancelled for unforeseen reasons or to spend any extra time to advise individual students. Our case study findings will shed more light on these issues. In Uganda excessively large classes are common at the secondary as well as primary level: secondary mathematics and science classes of more than sixty are readily visible and teachers widely blame large class sizes for shortcomings of achievement and pedagogy (CGDE, 2011). Although large class sizes are attributable to general shortages of classrooms and teachers and not only to those affecting science subjects, large classes may have particular negative effects on the time allocated to science practical work and on the manner in which such work is supervised.

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Research on class size in developing countries has produced no consensus about its importance as a factor in pupil achievement. This also applies to research on the topic in industrialised countries: but the latter has little relevance to the situation discussed here, as it is generally concerned with much smaller and lower ranges of class size. O’Sullivan (2006), after reviewing the literature, calls for experimental and observational research, in countries such as Uganda, on the relative advantages of improved teacher quality and reduced class size. However, as Lewin (1992) observes, ‘‘It may be that within a wide band achievement is not related to class size but this does not mean there are no limits’’ (p. 61). We are also aware of two examples of studies that do show effects of student–teacher ratio or class size in low-income contexts with some relevance to Uganda. These are an analysis of Grade 10 examination results in the Tamil Nadu state of India (Duraisamy et al., 1998) and a small study of Grade 7 achievement in Lesotho (World Bank, 2005). The time spent on learning is also widely thought to be important for pupil achievement. Walberg (1991, p. 40) mentions that the first IEA study3 of science education showed international differences in ‘‘official’’ content exposure to have powerful effects on learning outcomes in mathematics and science. More importantly, as Benavot and Gad (2004) show in a review of the available evidence, schools in Sub-Saharan Africa suffer from substantial gaps both between intended and actual instructional time and between the latter and actual ‘‘time-on-task’’ in the classroom. The research on private tutoring shows certain other problems that could also be caused or intensified by moonlighting. As Hallak and Poisson mention (2007, p. 161), secondary jobs encourage malpractice in the form of reduced availability of teachers at their main workplace. Another problem is teachers’ adoption of ‘‘cramming’’ strategies (see Sobhy, 2012, p. 60), which could occur in the secondary job if there is little supervision by school administrators. Another is teacher fatigue and inefficiency in the main job (Hallak and Poisson, 2007, p. 259), which could extend to outright absenteeism. An international survey of primary school teacher absenteeism (Reinikka and Smith, 2004) shows Uganda to have one of the highest rates, at 26 per cent, but Hallak and Poisson, in reporting this, fail to comment on the possible role of secondary jobs and occupations in this problem (2007, p. 164). We shall mention some limited evidence that absenteeism is also common in secondary education. In a context of teacher shortage and moonlighting, therefore, the learning outcomes in mathematics and science subjects could be affected negatively by a number of intervening factors. We have indicated that, in the Ugandan situation, these may include excessively large classes, reduced time spent on supervised learning in general, more emphasis on didactic methods, teacher fatigue and teacher absenteeism.

4. Research methods The data collection for the study was organised in three major components. Firstly, records of schools and teachers obtained at the national level were reviewed and analysed with reference to the issue of science teacher provision. Secondly, teacher records obtained at national level were analysed for evidence of multiple appointments, both generally and with reference to science. Thirdly, science teacher employment patterns were studied in detail in a local cluster of schools. The methods used in these three components are here introduced briefly. 3 The abbreviation, IEA, represents the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Walberg refers here to the study by Comber and Keeves (1973).

The Planning Unit of the Ministry of Education and Sports (MOES) made available, for recent years, data sets on (a) secondary level teachers, by main subject of specialisation and (b) secondary schools, showing enrolment, managing body and location. From these data sets we constructed a national school sample of 291 schools, as explained in the relevant section below, for purposes of analysis. With this sample, statistical inferences are made about the provision of science teachers and some related factors in Uganda as a whole. Consideration is given to differences between the science subjects, between the regions and between government and private schools. The teacher data set also provides evidence about the employment of a large number of secondary level teachers in more than one school nation-wide. A systematic sample of 1000 teachers is used in order to assess the prevalence of this kind of multiple employment, among the teachers generally and science teachers in particular, and its distribution across the country. Further details of the analytical procedures are given in Section 6. In order to provide a fuller understanding of the employment pattern and working conditions of science teachers, we also studied in detail a cluster of five adjacent secondary schools. These were four private and one government school in a suburban area of Kampala. Information was obtained from selected teachers and school administrators on science teachers’ work loads, sources of income and experience of multiple employment, both teaching and non-teaching. The discussion of this local evidence in Section 7 includes further details of the sample and procedures. 5. National evidence of the shortage of science teachers at school level As part of its annual school statistics for recent years, the Ministry of Education and Sports (MOES) of Uganda has collected some limited data on the subject specialisations of secondary level teachers. The ‘‘main subject’’ of teaching is recorded (in most cases) on lists of individual teachers. Many teachers work in more than one subject: but, as there is a general tendency for science teachers to specialise either in a combination of mathematics and physics or in a combination of biology and chemistry, the data do give some indication both of the overall number of science teachers and of the numbers in the two most common combinations.4 There are two major limitations, however. The first is that the teacher data are not incorporated in the school data sets, as would be relevant for planning. It is indeed obvious that the data have not been used for any detailed planning of the teaching force. The second limitation is that an ‘‘others’’ category in the subject specification, intended to be used for miscellaneous ‘‘unusual’’ subjects, has actually been misused in many instances where data were missing or not collected. (For certain schools, it appears that no data were obtained on teachers’ main subjects.) The circumstances at the time when the data were provided (mid-2011) were that the MOES was attempting to develop, with some external assistance, an educational management information system (EMIS), but had not reached the point where this was used for any central planning of the secondary teaching force. The reasons for the delay in reaching this point were not clear. In order to obtain relevant findings in this situation, our approach has been to construct a data set for a systematic national sample of secondary schools, for the year 2010, incorporating data both on enrolment and on teachers’ subject specialisation. An 4 It is also not unusual for teachers to combine chemistry with mathematics or physics, but combinations involving a second subject outside the science group of four are less common.

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Table 1 Science teacher provision at the school level: the national situation. Indicator

Type of school ownershipa

Science teachers (ST)/total teachers (TT)

Government Private All

Enrolment/ST

Government Private All

170 80 112

Enrolment/biology and chemistry teachers (B&C)

Government Private All

Enrolment/mathematics and physics teachers (M&P)

Enrolment/TT

a b

Mean 0.29 0.26 0.27

St. dev. 0.15 0.11 0.12

No. of schools (n)

Schools excludedb

102 181 283

4 4 8

188 72 133

102 181 283

4 4 8

330 207 255

273 191 233

87 138 225

19 47 66

Government Private All

269 127 176

346 128 237

94 178 272

12 7 19

Government Private All

50 19 30

69 21 47

106 185 291

0 0 0

The ‘‘private’’ category here includes all schools not owned by the government, some being owned by local community organisations. Schools are excluded where they have no ST (Rows 1 and 2), no B&C (Row 3) or no M&P (Row 4) recorded in the MOES teacher data set.

initial sample of 350 schools was drawn from a population of 2730 for which the total number of teachers in the school is recorded.5 Then 59 schools were excluded on grounds of inadequate recordkeeping,6 leaving a usable sample of 291 schools. With the school as the unit of analysis, Table 1 shows basic statistics for (1) total science teachers as a proportion of all teachers (ST/TT), (2) enrolment divided by the recorded science teachers (Enrolment/ST), (3) enrolment divided by the recorded biology and chemistry teachers (Enrolment/B&C), (4) enrolment divided by the recorded mathematics and physics teachers (Enrolment/M&P) and (5) for comparison, enrolment divided by all teachers (Enrolment/TT, i.e. the general student–teacher ratio). Schools which have no recorded teachers of the specified group are excluded from the measurements, but their numbers are recorded. As we have mentioned earlier, biology and chemistry on the one hand, and mathematics and physics on the other, are the most common combinations of subjects offered by teachers in this context: the combinations B&C and M&P are therefore useful indicators. Two caveats affect these and subsequent findings. One is that a few teachers do combine one of the four science subjects with another subject outside the group, such as chemistry with agriculture or mathematics with economics: in this regard the science teaching capacity may be slightly understated. A second is that the numbers of teachers recorded tend to include the parttime teachers in a school (a point illustrated later) and may overstate its full-time equivalent of staff. These caveats, however, do not much affect the general implications of the findings in Table 1. One of the main points arising from Table 1 is that, whereas teachers of mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics are responsible for about half the teaching time in the school curriculum, they tend to account for only one-quarter of the school’s teachers. As each natural science subject normally has four periods per week and mathematics has between six and eight periods in the lower secondary cycle, these four subjects tend to occupy 18–20 periods per week. There is a clear mismatch between

5 This available population of 2730 schools is 87 per cent of the total number of secondary schools as reported by the Ministry for 2009 (MOES, 2009, p. 37). 6 Those excluded consisted of 58 for which more than half the teachers’ subject specialisations were labelled as ‘‘others’’ and one large school for which only one teacher was recorded.

the curriculum requirements and the distribution of staffing capacity across subjects. A second observation is that the mean student–science teacher ratio (Enrolment/ST) is far above any level that might be considered a reasonable standard. This is especially so in government schools, which have a mean student–science teacher ratio of 170:1. Conventional staffing models, using class sizes of 40 and teaching loads of about 25 periods per week, suggest that in schools with two to four streams (which are typical in Uganda) the student–science teacher ratio should be in a range between 45:1 and 55:1 for the lower secondary level alone. For the A level curricula (Years S5 and S6) more generous standards should apply. Another point which emerges from Table 1 is that there is a greater scarcity of biology and chemistry specialists (B&C) than of mathematics and physics specialists (M&P), even when allowance is made for the greater curriculum time allocated to mathematics. The 66 schools with no recorded B&C at all (22 per cent of the sample) should be kept in mind. Such schools would try to manage with teaching by non-specialists or by unrecorded ‘‘moonlighters’’. A further matter for concern is the extreme variability of the staffing for science subjects in relation to enrolment, reflected in the large standard deviations in Table 1. Many schools have very few specialists, or none, in particular science subjects (especially B&C); yet in other schools there are unwarranted concentrations of specialists in one subject. There are also new ‘‘USE schools’’ within the public sector that are more severely under-staffed, both generally and in science, than older government schools. These anomalies underline the need for the national ministry to obtain a more comprehensive record of the subjects that teachers offer and to take a closer interest in staffing. The next part of the analysis (Table 2) shows the levels of provision of the main groups of science teachers (B&C and M&P) across the major regions of Uganda. Since the North-Eastern Region has a relatively small enrolment and has only four schools in the sample, it is here grouped with the Northern Region. Table 2 shows a situation of relative difficulty for the Eastern Region in the provision of mathematics and physics teachers, but otherwise no major regional differences. Compared with type of school ownership and region, a more important correlate of the level of provision of these groups of science teachers is the size of the school, as represented by its enrolment. Table 3 shows regressions of measures of the provision of B&C and M&P on the three variables of school size, public or private ownership and Eastern or other region. In this case log

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Table 2 Basic statistics for provision of groups of science teachers, by region. St. dev.

No. of schools (n)

Schools with nonea

Total

(A) Enrolment/biology and chemistry teachers (B&C) 240 Central Eastern 281 Northern and N-E 282 South-Western 213 Western 283 All Uganda 255

212 299 332 116 171 233

88 51 25 41 20 225

21 18 7 12 8 66

109 69 32 53 28 291

(B) Enrolment/mathematics and physics teachers (M&P) Central 148 Eastern 257 Northern and N-E 144 South-Western 161 Western 139 176 All Uganda

141 405 120 162 121 237

102 66 29 49 26 272

7 3 3 4 2 19

109 69 32 53 28 291

Region

a

Mean

Schools with no recorded specialists for these subjects.

Table 3 Factors in the provision of science teachers: regression analysis. Independent variables

Dependent variables Log (enrolment/B&C) b

Log enrolment Ownership (government = 1; private = 0) Region (Eastern = 1; other = 0)

0.701 0.024 0.029

Constant Adjusted R2 SE est. N

0.516 0.576 0.225 225

a * **

Log (enrolment/M&P)

b 0.781 0.034 0.035

a

t

**

16.51 0.72 0.85

b

b

ta

0.710 0.056 0.082

0.713 0.066 0.088

16.51** 1.53 2.32*

0.347 0.566 0.264 272

Calculated with finite population correction. Significant at the 5% level. Significant at the 1% level.

values of the measures of provision and of school size are used in order to meet the requirements of a linear analysis. In the level of provision of B&C, school size, which accounts for 57 per cent of the variance, entirely eclipses the effects of school ownership and region. In the case of M&P, however, the level is again affected mainly by school size, but slightly by region also, the Eastern Region being at a disadvantage. The analysis shows that, although private schools tend to be smaller than government schools,7 the shortage of science teachers is worse in the larger schools irrespective of ownership. 6. National evidence of multiple teaching appointments Not only are the recorded science specialists in each school too few for curriculum requirements, but a large proportion of these teachers are working in more than one school. The teacher data set supplied by MOES provides evidence of this tendency among secondary level teachers in general, as many names of teachers appear twice or more, in connection with different schools but generally within a common administrative unit. A systematic sample of 1000 teachers was drawn from the entire set of 46,476 teachers’ names and within this sample 239 teachers (nearly one-quarter) were identified as being probably employed in more than one school. The criteria used were as follows: (a) the teacher’s names appeared more than once, against different schools; (b) both names (surname and first name) were the same in each case or compatible (e.g. with initial instead of first 7 For the 272 schools in the M&P column of Table 3, r = 0.474 for log enrolment and the dummy variable for ownership.

name or alternative spelling used); (c) the schools were in the same district or lower administrative unit or, if not, in locations judged sufficiently accessible to each other. Records were made of the teacher’s gender and subjects taught, the incidence by region and whether the schools involved were government or private ones. As a guide to interpretation, it must be said that the evidence is tentative. Firstly, double listing of a pair of names (surname and first name) against different schools does not provide absolute proof that the same person is working in two schools; there may have been a few cases of different persons with the same names. Such proof would also be difficult to obtain because of the semiclandestine manner in which these appointments are often negotiated (a matter to which we shall return). But, where the schools are in a common administrative unit, especially a district or smaller unit, it is highly probable that the person is the same. Secondly, there are some higher multiple, as well as double, listings. These were carefully reviewed and interpreted with caution: as the number of listings of the same names increases, the probability that they all refer to the same person does diminish. For this reason, a category ‘‘three or more schools’’ is used in presenting the data. The evidence is nevertheless revealing and may understate the actual extent of multiple teaching appointments because of some omissions in data collection by the Ministry. Although a large proportion of schools provided the details of all their teachers, whether classified as part-time or full-time, others may have omitted the part-timers. This is suggested by the fact that certain private schools have only one teacher’s name recorded, for example. Of the 239 teachers assumed to be moonlighting, 194 (81 per cent) were employed in two schools and the remaining 45 in three

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Table 4 Assumed multiple appointments: science involvement and number of schools served frequencies, with row percentages in brackets. Number of schools for which listed

Teachers offering At least one science subjecta

Other/unknown subjectsb

Total

Two Three or more

108 (56) 28 (62)

86 (44) 17 (38)

194 (100) 45 (100)

Total

136 (57)

103 (43)

239 (100)

a b

‘‘Science subjects’’ here describes biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. In some cases the teacher’s main subject was not recorded, as explained earlier.

or more schools (see Table 4). The incomplete data on these teachers’ main subject show that at least 57 per cent of them were teaching at least one of the four science subjects, i.e. biology, chemistry, physics or mathematics, the proportion being higher for those teaching in more than two schools (Table 4). These findings are consistent with the assumption that science teachers obtain multiple teaching appointments relatively easily. But some teachers had reported different main subjects in their different schools, including some unusual combinations (e.g. a science and Divinity), and it is plausible that certain teachers who are looking for a second appointment will be willing to teach almost anything. Of 144 teachers, with apparent multiple appointments, for whom complete main subject data are available, 26 taught a science in one of their jobs only. Of the moonlighting teachers in general, nearly half (49 per cent) worked in schools within a common district or smaller administrative unit (see Table 5). The rest worked across districts that were either contiguous or easily accessible to each other. The cross-tabulation by gender in Table 5 suggests that female teachers are somewhat less likely than males to travel long distances between jobs. However, the female proportion in the group (19 per cent) is not much below the female proportion of 22 per cent reported to be in secondary level teaching (MOES, 2009). Multiple appointments are clearly a nation-wide phenomenon, although their occurrence may be relatively high in the Central and South-Western Regions and low in the Northern and Western Regions where central places are more dispersed. In Table 6 the percentages in the third and fourth columns may be compared. There is also a strong tendency for teachers to hold appointments in a combination of government and private schools: this applied to 113 teachers (47 per cent of the group), whereas government schools constitute only 30 per cent of the total at the secondary level (MOES, 2009, p. 37). The discussion of the qualitative data below clarifies the motives for such a combination.

7. A local illustration of the employment patterns of science teachers Further insights are provided by evidence obtained in five secondary schools, one government and four private, located in a Table 5 Assumed multiple appointments by common administrative unit and by gender of teacher. Common unita

Teachers by gender Female

Male

Total

Parish Sub-county County District Region None

8 6 5 7 17 2

16 17 31 27 92 11

24 23 36 34 109 13

Total

45

194

239

a

Administrative units are listed in ascending hierarchical order.

suburban area of Kampala (the Ugandan capital). The sources are interviews held with 23 teachers, questionnaires completed by 23 other teachers and interviews held with one head or deputy head teacher in each of the schools. The interview and questionnaire items focused on the allocation of teachers’ working time, in schools and elsewhere, their levels of pay from different sources and the perceived benefits and difficulties of multiple employment. Participation was voluntary for every individual and informants are kept strictly anonymous in reporting. The researchers recorded responses on data sheets. The authors jointly interviewed the head teachers, but shared the interviewing of the teachers, working separately. Data collection in two of the schools, located in a neighbouring parish, was initially treated as a pilot exercise, but, as no significant changes of procedure had to be made, it was decided to incorporate the pilot data in the main study. The teachers interviewed in each school were selected in a purposive manner in order to obtain representation of different levels of experience and of both genders as well as all four science subjects. Completion of questionnaires was requested from as many of the other science teachers as possible, but some were unavailable. In the event about threequarters of the science teachers were included. The 46 teachers had an average of 7.7 years of teaching experience (with a standard deviation of 6.0) and 22 per cent were female. Almost half of the teachers contacted (22 out of 46) revealed that they were working in two schools, but there were no cases of more than two. Other, non-teaching work was reported by eleven of those working in one school and seven of those working in two schools (a total of 18). The mean teaching work load for those teaching in one school was 22 periods per week (an apparently reasonable load), with a range 16–32, while for those teaching in two schools the mean was 41 periods per week (a very large commitment), with a range 27–69. For those teachers who estimated additional hours they spent on non-teaching work, there was a mean of 13 h per week (from 14 cases). In the case of teachers doing more than 40 periods a week, each interacted with between 310 students and 1142 students in their classrooms by the end of the week. Some classes were extremely large. Such teachers accepted that their work load was excessive, leaving them little or no time for interaction with students and making evaluation of students’ learning very difficult. In certain cases it is not credible that teaching was actually done in all the periods, unless the teacher covertly sub-contracted part of the work. With regard to the reasons for working in two schools, more than half of the teachers contacted mentioned the need or desire for more income, some asserting that they could not manage with the pay from one school. Other reasons given were the desire for wider experience and the incentive of pay based on specific services (typical of some private schools). From the interviews with teachers and school administrators it was confirmed that staff shortages were an important factor and that it could be advantageous for teachers to work both in a government and a private school, as many do. Government schools provide a more secure post, more regular pay and the prospect of a pension. Private

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78 Table 6 Assumed multiple appointments by region. Region(s)

Count

A. In one region Central Eastern Northern/North-Eastern South-Western Western

111 44 14 36 21

46.4 18.4 5.9 15.1 8.8

11 1 1

4.6 0.0 0.0

239

100.0

B. In two regions Central and Eastern Central and South-Western Eastern and Northern Total a

Percentage

Region’s share (%) of secondary enrolment, 2009a 35.9 24.8 13.4 9.0 16.9

na na na 100.0

Source: MOES (2009, p. 42).

schools offer higher rates of pay and subsidised housing in some cases: but they may not provide any contract or even a letter of appointment, so that the teacher has little protection against managerial abuses. Interviewees responded to an open-ended question about the problems caused by working in more that one school, while the questionnaire raised specific issues such as fatigue and lateness. Problems frequently admitted by teachers were their inability to help individual students or to take part in co-curricular activities and difficulty in completing marking and records on time, as well as fatigue and lateness to class. School administrators confirmed all these points and also mentioned absenteeism as an outcome. In the light of the work loads mentioned above, none of these problems is surprising. Other areas of difficulty mentioned by teachers were the suspicious attitudes of some school administrators relating to the dual employment, the negotiation of time tables, and the travel between the schools, which in Ugandan conditions could be exhausting. One teacher interviewed did a weekly 4-h journey to and from his second school, which was located in a rural area. Although there were fewer responses on levels of pay than on other matters, the situation with regard to pay may be summarised as follows. For those teaching in one school who responded fully (20 cases), there was a mean monthly income from all sources— salary, allowances and any supplementary work—of UGX561,000 (convertible to US$219 at the time), the salary component being UGX380,000. For those teaching in two schools (16 cases reporting fully), the mean monthly income from all sources was UGX914,000 (convertible to US$357). The mean salary component for those working in two schools was UGX812,000 (from 21 cases).When asked whether their income was adequate for their needs, very few teachers responded positively, even if they were teaching in two schools. For the monthly income that teachers said they needed, there was a mean of UGX1,372,000 (from 35 responses). 8. Overview of factors in the shortage of science teachers The relative shortage of teachers of mathematics and natural science subjects at the secondary level is in part a continuous cyclical problem with roots in ineffective teaching and learning. One circular causal chain involves links with primary education. The lack of interest and poor performance in these subjects at O level (see UNEB, 2009) leads to a low level of competence in mathematics and science among primary teacher trainees and hence to a weak foundation for students at the primary level, affecting their capacity at the lower secondary level. Another part of the problem involves tertiary education. Poor performance at O level leads to low enrolment in mathematics and science programmes for A level, university degrees and tertiary diplomas. It remains to be seen how far the government sponsorship policy will make a difference. The proportion of

tertiary students in Uganda enrolled in science based programmes was reported to be only 22 per cent in 2010 (Kasozi, 2010, p. 21). Partly because of low teachers’ pay, secondary teacher education programmes, whether in the universities or in the national teachers’ colleges, cannot attract enough of the available science students, especially high performers, for the needs of schools. Added to these embedded factors are more recent influences of government policy that were mentioned earlier: the requirement of three compulsory sciences at O level and the rapid expansion of secondary level enrolment. Available statistics (UNESCO, 2009, p. 330; MOES, 2009) indicate that enrolment in general secondary education increased from 728,000 in 2005 to 1,194,000 in 2009, implying an annual growth rate of 13.2 per cent.8

9. Interaction of the shortage with other influences on learning The conceptual framework anticipated that the shortage and multiple employment of teachers would have negative consequences for the quality of teaching and learning and the local findings have indicated some of them. In addition, the recent study by CGDE (2011) illustrates a number of problems, of curriculum, facilities and pedagogy as well as teacher availability, which combine to limit teacher effectiveness in mathematics and the natural sciences. The official syllabi in use for these subjects—both those of the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) and those of the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB)—appear ambitious in relation to the context of scarce personnel and resources. One example of an ambitious feature is the emphasis of the NCDC chemistry syllabus on ‘‘discovery of knowledge’’, ignoring the difficulties experienced with this concept in the past (see Hodson, 1996). Another example is the academic, ‘‘solid foundation’’ emphasis of the UNEB mathematics syllabus.9 Other researchers have found the mathematics textbooks in use to be formal and decontextualised in their approach (Namukasa et al., 2010). Most teachers interviewed in the CGDE (2011) study reported difficulty in meeting all of the syllabus objectives: the factors mentioned most frequently were excessive content and shortages of physical facilities and materials. Some considered that, as a result of the excessive syllabus content, not enough time was given to practical work (pp. 59–60). In these circumstances, teachers who have excessive hours as a result of moonlighting, would find it all the more difficult to meet the syllabus requirements.

8 The enrolment figures are rounded to the nearest 1000. They do not include students in technical and vocational institutions. 9 The emphasis of the aims is on computational skills, understanding of concepts and logical reasoning, rather than problem-solving. The label, ‘‘solid foundation’’, is from Roberts (1988, pp. 32–38).

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Various limitations of teachers’ work that were observed in the CGDE study are ones to which teacher shortages may well have contributed. These include a general lack of written lesson plans, infrequent giving of homework, lack of performance based assessment and insufficient formative use of assessment (CGDE, 2011, pp. 52–53, 62–63). The last two problems are partly attributable to the emphasis placed on examinations in the school culture, some schools holding examinations three times per term. Where teachers have heavy work loads, however, it is relatively difficult for them to challenge this culture. 10. General implications of the findings The teacher shortages and associated problems as we have identified them illustrate the incoherence of an educational system in which an ambitious curriculum is prescribed by the central government, but the provision of a large part of the resources with which to implement it—notably the key resource of teachers—is left to the market. Those science teachers who stay in the profession for any length of time tend to survive by teaching in two or more schools (often including both a government and a private school), by engaging in a second occupation, or both. In this they exemplify a trend among secondary teachers generally. Thus the government, in order to meet the demand for secondary education and fulfil its obligations under the USE policy, is depending on private schools and private enterprises in several ways. Private schools enrol a large proportion of the students, supplement the pay of teachers on the government payroll and meet the entire cost of many other teachers. Other private enterprises also supplement the pay of teachers by providing additional employment. Under the umbrella of the USE policy, the MOES has introduced some provision of secondary school places with minimal private costs, for the benefit of the poorest families. But, by running its own secondary schools, especially the new ones, with very meagre resources (classes of over 100 students and no laboratory assistants, for example), the Ministry ensures that the demand for private schooling continues to be high. The administrators of schools, whether pubic or private, in order to meet their own curriculum requirements and to enable teachers to survive financially, tolerate the moonlighting culture. The quality of students’ learning opportunities is thereby impoverished. The intake of students is increasing rapidly, but they are likely to receive a minimal service from overstretched teachers, especially in science subjects, even when their parents are paying fees. This scenario has implications for the way in which the national government should manage a decentralised and pluralistic system of secondary education, in situations of scarce resources like that of Uganda. For many reasons—historical, cultural and financial—the Government of Uganda depends on a majority of secondary schools that are owned and administered by ‘‘private’’ (i.e. non-government) bodies and are in many cases relatively small. The owners are very varied, including religious bodies, local community organisations and individual entrepreneurs. Achievement of the goal of widening access to secondary education depends on a successful partnership with these schools. In this context the rigid requirement to teach three separate sciences is very questionable, as it makes the staffing and equipment of small schools considerably more difficult. A decentralised approach to the administration and financing of schools should be matched by a flexibility that allows schools more choice in matters of curriculum. This curriculum dimension of partnership has received little attention in the literature, but the argument is consistent with the conclusion reached by Jimenez and Lockheed (1995) that ‘‘the relative efficiency of private schools is highly dependent on the institutional regime’’ under which they operate, especially the space given to them ‘‘to choose a suitable input mix’’ (p. 121).

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Another set of issues relates to the scope for privatisation in educational provision and which aspects of provision, if any, should be outsourced. Currently private bodies in Uganda are meeting a substantial part of the total salary cost of secondary level teachers, as well as the costs of physical facilities in many schools. As Colclough and Lewin have warned, however (1993, p. 175), there are risks in devolving responsibility for inputs, such as teachers, that are closely associated with learning outcomes. The findings of this study underline the risks inherent in such a dispensation, especially where the teacher labour market is not closely regulated. The education sector in Uganda, as in a number of other countries in Africa and elsewhere, has experienced a profusion of ‘‘privatisation’’ initiatives since the 1990s. In the case of Uganda the debate about privatisation has focused mainly on higher education, but secondary education has been affected by the same entrepreneurial tendencies (Kitaev, 1999, pp. 138–140), which to some extent account for the ‘‘moonlighting culture’’ described in this study. In exposing the commercialisation of teaching at Makerere University in the period 1997–2005, Mamdani (2007, pp. 119–120) describes a pattern of different faculties ‘‘poaching’’ teachers from each other through part-time contracts: a pattern of behaviour likely to have been replicated by schools at the secondary level and compatible with our data, although we have not obtained direct evidence of it. Furthermore, the dependence of private universities in Uganda on moonlighting by lecturers in the public ones is mentioned by Kasozi, (2009, p. 169), albeit very briefly. The commercial tendencies in higher and secondary education are not simply a matter of the growth of ‘‘for profit’’ private institutions. As this study shows, the teachers themselves have learned to be ‘‘entrepreneurial’’ in response to the low pay that work in one institution provides. The professional concept of a dedicated service in return for a fair and reliable salary is thus in danger of being lost. It must also be said that, as secondary education is a more basic service with a far wider clientele than higher education, it is all the more necessary on grounds of equity and efficiency that the public educational authorities should regulate and monitor the recruitment and deployment of teachers at this level. 11. The way forward Is there a way out of the apparent impasse? We suggest that initiatives in four areas would be helpful. The goals would be proper use of employment contracts, adequate information at national level, improvements in teachers’ pay and more modest curriculum requirements for the subjects concerned. To some extent the sharing of teachers between schools, in a planned manner, is justifiable and will continue to be essential for the effective provision of secondary education in Uganda. It is most obviously reasonable for teachers of subjects that have small allocations of students or of time, such as Arabic, French or Divinity. With more caution, it could be defended as a provisional arrangement for core subjects, where schools need time to recruit full-time teachers. What would be difficult to defend is the current unregulated and chaotic situation, in which the whole process is left to individual and often clandestine negotiations between teachers and school administrators. The situation leaves much scope for malpractice and inefficient arrangements. A useful first step would be for the Ministry to require the owners of private schools to provide written contracts of employment to their teachers, whether full-time or part-time. This would help to make the private school teaching force more stable. The monitoring of schools would be linked to a more comprehensive, transparent and efficient compilation of data on the secondary level teaching force. This is not so much a matter of technology as one of designing data collection to meet the needs of planning. Without a relevant information system and fairly

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comprehensive data, it will be difficult for the Ministry, even if it has the vision and the will, to work for a more rational deployment and adequate supply of teachers. Measures to increase the supply of science teachers and to regulate and reduce the sharing of these teachers between schools would be more likely to succeed if they included improved pay. Improving teachers’ pay is inevitably described as ‘‘difficult’’ in the present context of the rapid expansion of secondary education (Lewin, 2008): but, as this study shows, it is necessary for the quality of the service. The Government of Uganda has recently taken a step in the right direction by introducing the science teachers’ allowance, of 30 per cent of salary, which was approved in principle in 2009. Although a more general improvement of teachers’ pay would probably increase the pressure for economy measures in other aspects of educational provision, a more systematic approach to the deployment of teachers could make their work more cost-effective. The staffing and equipment of secondary schools for science is made more difficult by ambitious curriculum requirements and there is scope for some modification of the latter within a fairly short time frame. For example, the Ugandan authorities could consider reducing the O level requirement of compulsory natural science subjects from three to two. In addition, the allocation of 12 periods per week to the natural sciences in Uganda is unusually high for the lower secondary level, in relation to international norms,10 and could be reduced to nine for Secondary One and Two. These more modest requirements would be helpful to the numerous small secondary schools, reducing the pressure to employ part-time teachers. As part of an intended general reform of the lower secondary level curriculum in Uganda, the NCDC is now planning to replace the present separate science subjects with a combined science ‘‘learning area’’ throughout the four years leading to O level (Secondary One to Secondary Four) with effect from 2017 (Musoke, 2013). If this, relatively radical, change is implemented, along with a suitable training of teachers for the whole learning area, one of its advantages will be to simplify the deployment of science teachers, especially in the smaller schools (see also Blum, 1991). The challenge for Uganda and for other countries facing similar problems is to make the objectives of secondary education more achievable at a time of rapid growth. It would be unfortunate if the wider provision of educational opportunities were to be impeded by the strange mixture of a rigid curriculum requirements and a scarce, commercialised provision of teachers. Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank the Ministry of Education and Sports of Uganda and the secondary schools visited for their cooperation in the research discussed here. Some of the material in this article was presented at the International Conference on Education held at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya, 20–22 July 2011, in a paper entitled ‘‘Shortages of mathematics and science teachers in Uganda: why they matter and why they occur’’.

10 For the eighth grade in 20 countries where separate science subjects were taught, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) of 2007 reports that on average each science subject was officially allocated 6 per cent of a total weekly instruction time of 28 h, i.e. 1.68 h per week (Martin et al., 2008, p. 200). In comparison, Uganda’s official allocation of four periods per science subject in S1 (the eighth grade) implies a substantially higher time allocation, of 2.67 h per week assuming periods of 40 min. The TIMSS of 2011 does not report weekly statistics, but the annual statistics for instructional time are similar to those of 2007. The Ugandan time allocation is all the more surprising in that TIMSS countries, being in the high and middle income groups, are likely to have more adequate resources for science teaching.

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