Kampala — 34 districts are likely to miss out on the government school inspection funds this financial year after failing to account for the money they received last year, Daily Monitor has learnt.

According to documents obtained from the Ministry of Education, of the 93 districts that received the funds last year, only 60 have accounted for it. Most of the affected districts are in the east, north and central regions. By September 9 they had not posted their inspection and financial accountability reports.

"All the districts have to account for all the funds in the four quarters but as of September 9 only 60 had submitted their inspection and financial accountability reports. And we have now recommended to the ministry to send money to only those (districts) that have compiled," said Education Standard Agency director Mr Huzaifa Mutazindwa.

MoE has earmarked Shs2.5billion this financial year for school inspection through the Quality Enhancement Programme. The money will be wired to the qualifying districts this week.

Ministry of Education records indicate that Shs54,000 is budgeted for inspection per school each term and districts with more schools receive more funds.

Ministry guidelines stipulate that schools are supposed to be inspected at least once a term but this is rarely done due to the small numbers of inspectors. However, school inspectors blame it on increased workload and insufficient resources.

A recent Transparency International (Uganda) report said mismanagement of resources right from the dispatching centre to beneficiary schools is partly to blame for poor inspection of schools. The report titled: "Leakages amidst scarcity: An assessment report on the governance and utilization of primary education resources in Uganda," is based on a random survey conducted in 55 primary schools in 17 districts across all regions.

Education Ministry guidelines require school inspectors and district education officers to monitor financial accountability by the school head teachers.

Last year, the ministry trained 906 associate assessors comprising of former teachers and head teachers to assist the existing inspectors in the districts. The inspector to school ratio in Uganda currently stands at 1:90 which is far below the internationally recommended ratio of 1:40.

Last year, government closed a total of 398 schools for failure to meet minimum operational, safety and security standards as stipulated in the Education Act, 2008.

This came about after many schools had caught fire and billions of shillings worth of property was lost. These tragedies could have been averted if inspectors were adequately doing their work.

According to the Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) results released early this year, the pass rate for 2008 was 80.2 per cent compared to 86.5 per cent in 2007 and 88.2 per cent in 2006.

Of the 463,631 pupils who sat for the 2008 PLE, 89,306 (19.3per cent) completely failed all the four subjects taught. This implies the number of failures shot up by over 50 per cent, compared to the two previous years.

In 2007, there were 56,603 (13.5 per cent) pupils who failed whereas 47,717 (11.8 per cent) pupils failed PLE in 2006.

Education Minister Namirembe Bitamazire recently said the department of primary education was investigating what could have led to poor performance and findings are yet to be made public. The minister admitted that the education standards particularly at primary level had dropped to due teachers' lack of seriousness and poor attitude towards work.