Boosting the Quality of Education in Uganda: An Interview with ETH4D Doctoral Mentee Mercy Chemutai

Mercy, you are currently in the end phase of your PhD “Leveraging teacher concerns in curriculum reform: A mixed methods case study of selected government schools in Uganda.” Please tell us more about your background and the focus of your doctoral research.

I trained as a teacher of secondary level Biology and Chemistry in Uganda. I also hold a Masters degree in Educational Leadership. I have served in both private and government educational institutions in Uganda. However, the greater part of my teaching service has been spent in childcare organisations in Central Uganda. I believe that teaching in this environment planted the first seeds of passion for better quality education in my context. These were vulnerable children who had no choice but to take what was handed to them and I was convinced that they deserved the best they could get if they were ever to have a fair chance at life.

My doctoral study interrogates the role of teachers, specifically their concerns in the implementation of the Uganda Lower Secondary Curriculum reform. In the pursuit of quality education through reform, it is vital that teachers are on board with this change. As a teacher, I understand first-hand the frustration of having to implement an educational change in a less-than-ideal environment as is the case in the majority of Ugandan schools. Moreover, the non-involvement of teachers during the development phase means that the reform misses out on the teachers’ technical expertise. The unfortunate result is that policy makers and educational leaders often blame teachers for “failing” the reform and hence retarding national progress. My study therefore seeks to present and analyse the concerns of Ugandan teachers in the current reform process, but also go further to propose a heuristic action model by which these can be leveraged by Ugandan change facilitators to scaffold the change process.

Before your doctorate, you were a teacher for 10 years. What inspired you to take up doctoral research?

In my career as an educator in Uganda, I have encountered many ‘problems’, both as a teacher and as a school administrator. These problems spanned from human resource management, to student achievement (especially in my area of secondary level science), and stakeholder engagement. As educational leaders we often responded to these challenges with pat answers, or (in my opinion) shallow, short-lived solutions. So, these problems kept recurring. Teachers were frustrated, students were frustrated, the school leaders themselves became frustrated and often the blame game took centre stage or everyone simply adapted.
I always believed that there was a better way, a solution we had not yet discovered, and could if we would only search deeper. What were the facts? According to whom? Were those facts relevant to our time and context? Were we dealing with the real problem or just its symptoms? What was the real problem then? How did others solve that problem? What had the authorities in the field said about it? These and many more questions spurred me onto a quest for a PhD in education. I wanted to be free to dedicate myself to the task of helping to solve problems that my colleagues were frankly too busy to contemplate to any depth. In this way, I wanted to help boost the quality of education in Uganda, Africa, maybe even the world.

The previous year you completed an ETH doctoral mentorship program which included a three month stay in Zurich. Were there any learnings during that year which surprised you?

Those three months at the Chair of Education Systems, ETH Zurich were truly eye-opening. For starters, the economic orientation of majority of the members of the chair gave me a different perspective to educational reform. I learnt quite a lot. However, my biggest take-away was the organisation of the Swiss education system, particularly, the high level of permeability between the various educational pathways. It was gratifying to see how the Swiss had ensured that there was a place for everyone no matter their ability and that anyone could climb as high as they wished on the education ladder. My country has many leaves to borrow from that tree!

What impact do you aim to have with your research?

Through my study, I seek to unearth critical evidence from past scholarship and the contemporary Ugandan situation in order to build a solid case for an approach to reform that takes full advantage of teacher core expertise. Thus, I hope to contribute to the revitalisation of the teaching profession in Uganda by helping to carve out a permanent, impactful seat for them at the educational policy-making table. I hope that this will result in national education decisions of greater quality for the sake of the many Ugandan children who depend on public education.

Which transformations do you hope to see in Uganda’s Education System in the next 10 years?

Frankly, I wish to see a Ugandan education system where public education is highly sought-after for its quality. This will mean that the poorest and most vulnerable are getting the best. For the next decade this will mean reviewing the funding of government schools to ensure more equitable opportunities for all learners. It will also mean improving accountability systems for public schools. Importantly too, it will mean a lot more investment in teacher professional development, remuneration, and motivation. I believe that the lower secondary curriculum reform is a great start but it needs to be supported on a system-wide scale.