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Uganda: Making Science Education Possible for Poor Locals

Michael J. Ssali

5 October 2008

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Teaching science in low resource secondary schools has always been a nightmare for most teachers as such schools always lack the necessary equipment to carry out practical lessons and to afford their students an opportunity to get hands-on experience and to get a better understanding of science.

They are characterised by low pass grades in national exams and the students from such schools have minimal chances of joining technical institutions or taking up professions such as medicine or engineering.

The schools experiencing problems of this kind are situated mainly in the rural areas where they do not have access to electricity.

It was this awkward situation that led some science teachers out there, Mr Jackson Tibenda (Chemistry) and Mr Mahsud Mwinyi (Physics and Mathematics) to think really hard and come up with what they considered an easy solution to the problem.

The two teach at Sseke Secondary School far out in rural Masaka's Kisekka sub-county. One of the steps they took was to ask some local craftsmen to make science equipment such as test tube holders and a few others from locally available materials. They would then set science tasks at different tables, and ask the students to rotate from one task to another carrying out different experiments.

Of course, to some schools even possessing several tables is a problem. But the result was that at the end of the day the different students succeeded handling some form of science equipment and in carrying out an experiment. The two teachers dubbed this arrangement, Mobile Science Laboratory Facility (Moslafa).

They soon shared out the idea with fellow science teachers in the neighbouring equally low resource secondary schools and it proved popular. Finally, they resorted to pooling resources together and buying chemicals, which they would then share.

"A bottle of sulphuric acid costs over Shs50,000," Mr Tibenda said, "yet we did not need all of it for all our lessons as a single school in a whole year. So we would each contribute some money, buy it and then share it.

We would then use the rest of the money to buy other science teaching items." If a school was lucky to get an expensive item such as a microscope it would let other schools borrow it and the equipment would shift from one school to another.

Finally all the schools teaching science in that arrangement agreed to form an association called Moslafa. Its membership now comprises of nearly 20 in the districts of Masaka and Mbarara.

Among Moslafa's other activities is science teachers holding regular meetings to discuss the problems of teaching science in financially less endowed schools.

Around 2001 an article about their efforts was published in the then The Monitor and it attracted the kind attention of a British couple; Mr John and Angela Smith who came to Uganda looking for Moslafa. They offered to mobilise used science teaching equipment in Britain and arrange shipment to Moslafa.

Smith and Angela are both retired science teachers. A British charity, Tools with a Mission does the shipment at no cost to Moslafa.

Every year, the schools have been getting modern science teaching equipment and text books worth millions of shillings. Not all the items shipped to Moslafa are of course new, but they are all in good working condition. Occasionally the consignment includes used computers. The apparatus, as Mr Smith once explained, are obtained from some schools in Britain that don't need them or from schools that close down.

On September 16, ten secondary schools under Moslafa, in Masaka, received a donation of science teaching equipment, worth Shs12million. They included equipment such as beakers, microscopes, Bunsen burners, stop clocks, test tubes, conical flasks and a whole range of other laboratory glassware.

Mrs Florence Kigongo, chairperson of Masaka Headteachers Association handed over the equipment to the various representatives of the recipient schools in Masaka Town.

St. Anthony's Secondary School, Kayunga; Misanvu Comprehensive; St. Peter's Kisojo; Eagles Nest Kirimya and King David S.S Lukaya received the items.

During the hand over ceremony, Mrs Kigongo appealed to school heads to continue the tradition of sharing with schools that had not been lucky to get equipment. She also explained that the choice of receiving schools was carried out randomly.

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