Education ministry funded to improve refugees' education

By Daudi Zirimala

The ministry of Education and sports,Education cannot wait and UN education partners have launched the first set of activities under Uganda's new education response plan for refugees and host communities targeting 100,00 refugees and Ugandan children.

Education cannot wait is a global fund dedicated to providing education in emergencies with 11million dollars aimed at implementing this cause.

According Achillies Nsheki the country director FINALI ,the funds will be managed by the NGO Education consortium and UNHCR in close coordination with ministry of education and Sports and activities will begin in January and will cover nine of 12 refugee hosting districts in Uganda.

He says the initial funding will focus on providing primary education and accelerated education programmes which help children who have missed years of schooling to catch up by teaching a specially adapted primary curriculum in just three years.

“These new funds will support quality education for more than 100,000 children both refugees and local host communities of whom 50% are girls” says Nsheki.

According to Aggrey Kibinge the under secretary ministry of Education ,Under these funds activities will include constructing at least 100 new classrooms, training nearly 1000 teachers,building more than 489 gender sensitive sanitation facilities in schools and providing thousands of new texts books.

The Education Response plan is the first of its kind world wide and was developed to help respond to huge needs in whats in Africa’s biggest refugee education crisis.

Uganda hosts more than 1.1 million refugees and at least 57% of refugee children and 34% of children from local host communities are out of school.