The influence of weekly markets, ‘vandos’, on teaching and learning in Ntoroko District

Most people agree that learners need to regularly attend school in order to succeed in their academic performance. Yet absenteeism is a chronic problem in Uganda, and in Ntoroko district in particular, where both teachers and pupils tend to be routinely absent from school for various reasons.

According to the 2013 Uwezo findings in Uganda, three in every ten pupils (31 percent of girls and 33 percent of boys) and two out of ten teachers (21 percent) on any normal day of school are absent.

In Ntoroko district, it is officially known that every Thursday there is no school. Head teachers, teachers, and almost three quarters of learners go to the local markets called vandos, commonly known for selling cattle. And with majority of the community depending on cattle sales as the main source of income, when these weekly markets come around, everyone is anxious to participate in order to get some money to buy foodstuffs, as well as raise school fees.

During the Uwezo Beyond Basics assessment, an activity that was carried out in 10 districts of Uganda covering 200 schools during the week of 24^th – 28^th October 2016, Ntoroko was one of the districts and I was happy to be part of a team of eight who visited 20 schools in the district. Generally, we confirm that children are not amply learning. From our observations, only less than 5 percent of primary five and six pupils could divide at primary four level. This finding relates to the 2014 Uwezo assessment findings, which revealed that learning levels in Uganda remain very low, only 13 percent in primary three and 74 percent in primary seven were able to read a primary two level English story and correctly solve primary two level division.

During the assessments, we experienced the reality of no school on Thursdays. We hardly found teachers or learners in schools. In Musandama modern primary school (not real name), one of the teachers whom we happened to find at the school said that it was very difficult to convince anyone to be at school. She added that the school tried to intervene but parents would come on their knees, literary asking for permission for their children to be away from school to attend the vandos.

According to the head teacher Kasungu primary school, “Parents often aren’t aware of how much their children are missing over the course of the school year. A missed day here and there may not seem like a big deal compared to missing several days in a row. But a few days every month can quickly add up to a lot of missed school in a year, thus leading to low learning outcomes.”

In the end, for some learners, frequent absences may become a long-term habit leading to other consequences like losing interest, thus dropping out of school. It is therefore imperative for the concerned authorities to explore possible remedies to this situation, one of which could be to shift the vandos to the weekend to allow children uninterrupted schooling.