A few weeks ago, schools – especially Parent of
Offspring who had sat P7 Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) held their breath
as Peep at the education ministry released this year’s results.
Every parent who had Offspring in the top schools -
Budo, Mwiri, Gayaza, Namagunga… expected them to do well and the school to be
ranked amongst the top performing. However, there is Parent who opted to give Offspring
a private education in - Kabojja, Greenhill, Taibah and St Mary’s Kitende for
example. By sending them to private schools, they expected Offspring to outperform
the Budo, Mwiri, Gayaza and Namagunga lot. After all, private schools promised
Parent that for the hefty fees, Offspring will get the best possible education,
come top in class with the school being one of the best performers. But for
many private schools and Parent, that script didn’t go to plan when PLE results
were released. Offspring didn’t perform well and the private schools got
trounced by unheard of schools.
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| Fridah Tindyebwa has Beef With Greenhill Academy |
Enter Fridah Tindyebwa, a parent, who opted to take
Offspring to a private school – Greenhill for ten years. To say Fridah is
angry, bitter and upset is an understatement. She’s seething! Venting her wrath
on social media about the results she says: “Hearing
all this poor performance saga of Greenhill, I point my issues directly to you
- JV Maraka. Greenhill is a power house first class school were sons and
daughters of the most comfortable parents go. Why would it perform poorly with
all the fees parents pay? How can schools simanya
- Kakooge, Kayunga, Nakasongola… get 4s and Greenhill just one 4? Tuli kuki wano?”
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| Is This One Of The Simanya Schools That Irked Fridah? |
There’s more: “…you give a lot of homework to
our children. You make class almost impossible by children arriving at 6:00am
and class starting at 6:45 am. What’s all this nonsense? Fellow parents wake up
at 4:00am panicking to get to school on time so their children are not locked
out before 6:45 am when class starts. Look at the nursery class - babies coming
at that time. They are stressed. They go home late and arrive very early - no
resting time at all. No sports routinely for our children. All you do is
work…..work…work.”
“Homework is a menace. A child writes the
questions in the book and also write the answer. That is double working and
malice including time wasting. Why not give papers and children write answers
directly?”
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| The Simanya Schools Did Better Than Some Of The More Prominent Schools |
“All you do is send circulars of increment in
school fees by 200,000k and that all fees should be paid at once - no bitundu. Who are you? Don’t you ever have
bad times and borrow money from banks or even money lenders? Pick me up at my
offices at the new URA offices if you want, naye
tubakooye.”
Fridah has every right to be peeved. After
all, she tells us that she works in URAs Nakawa skyscraper where I presume, she earns more than a
decent salary and thus can afford to take Offspring to Greenhill. But she’s not
getting the desired results.
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| URA Headquarters In Nakawa Where Fridah Works |
But what’s really venting Fridah? Is it forking
out mob dime for a substandard education for Offspring or the having to get up
at 4:00am, the annoying 200,000k fees increments, the embarrassment of going to
Money Lender to get fees? Assuming the school had come top, is it plausible that
Fridah would not have ranted about Offspring having to get up at 4:00am, the
annoying 200,000k fees increments or going to Money Lender?
As we draw to a close, in today’s Uganda, is there
not something called choice – the freedom to move Offspring from one school to
another at whim? For 10 years, Faidah preserved with Greenhill instead of evoking
the choice option and moving Offspring to the Simanya schools that excelled.
Photos: URN, campustimes.com, nilepost.co.ug, abingdon-rotary.org. monitor.co.ug
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