School Priorities - SNV

Community Participation
Children are meant to be seen and not heard. Just an expression? Not in some schools,
where students are regarded as passive recipients of education rather than as active
participants. This environment promotes teachers as the true gatekeepers of education,
imparting knowledge to ignorant children who are meant to quietly listen and memorise
what they are told.
Parents are often silenced as well. They are expected to send their children to school and
provide them with uniforms and school supplies, but don’t have a chance to voice their
opinions on what happens in the classroom because too often
schools do not value their contributions.
In Mukongoro Subcounty in Kumi District, pupils and most
parents were also voiceless in the school planning process. School
management committees (SMCs) and parent-teacher associations
(PTAs) who supposedly represent the wider community did not
ask for other parents’ opinions, let alone children’s views. They did
not know what parents and children liked or disliked about their
schools and they did not consider their dreams for creating better
futures. Teachers and headteachers made the decisions for parents
and children, many of whom were afraid to express themselves
and became detached from what happened in school, including
Few key stakeholders were engaged in
the learning process. Others felt that their dreams were ignored
assessing and improving schools.
and stopped attending, leading to poor test results and a strained
relationship between schools and the communities they are meant to serve.
The Kumi District Education Officer (DEO) desired a new approach for Mukongoro’s
primary schools—one that would involve more parents and pupils in school affairs and
give them a voice to express what was most important to them. SNV decided to help the
DEO in this endeavour. It trained Transform Uganda, a Kumi-based non-governmental
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