QUALITY CONTROL AND TEACHERS’ PERFORMANCE IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN UGANDA: A CASE STUDY OF GULU DISTRICT

Abstract

Education is a right to every person. It has been placed as one of the priorities under Millennium Development Goals by United Nations. Uganda used education to improve socio-economic development of its citizen; Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP). Foundation of education is basic education, built solidly by the teachers. The performance of teachers has not been good in Uganda’s primary schools: high rate of absenteeism, poor time management, lack of lesson preparation and poor assessment of the learners. This poor performances by the teachers occurred despite the established quality control system available. Therefore, this study was carried out to examine the relationship between quality control and teachers’ performance in primary schools in Gulu District. The specific objectives were: to examine the relationship between set standards, monitoring, support supervision, mentoring, and performance of the teachers in primary schools in Gulu District. The study employed a crossed-sectional survey design. The key respondents were teachers from sampled primary schools, where by informants included head teachers, and education managers at various levels in the District. Key findings indicated that set standards and mentoring have high levels of significance, while support supervision and monitoring were not significantly related to teachers’ performance. Key recommendations are; adequate resources for lesson preparation should be availed to the teachers and implementation of the scheme of service be effected to enhance teachers’ performance to set standards. Teachers accommodation at school campuses should be a priority to enable teachers live and mentor each other more effectively. The school Inspectors should have a continuous professional development and good customer care short course to enable them be relevant and effective in their duties. The study suggests that a research be conducted on Government Policies of automatic promotion and ban on canning in schools, they are assumed responsible for the decline in quality of education. This will help policy makers improve on quality of education. It is also important if a study is conducted to find out why support supervision has no positive significant to teachers’ performance, as this study established , to enable policy makers aware of the salient issues