Accountability

Rwentutu Christian School has a very complex accountability system.  Rwentutu is accountable to the families of the students they serve and the surrounding community.  After the third term in November Rwentutu P7 will take their final set of National Primary Exams which will dictate what secondary school options they have.  These results will be published in  newspapers and shared with the community.  This is the norm in Uganda.  Rwentutu is different because a major portion of their funding comes from Canada and with this funding comes specific goals and expectations that may or may not align with the teachers, community and parents goals and expectations.

Rwentutu was started by a parliament member Amos, who is from the Ruwenzori area, whose main goal was to build a school in the Rwentutu area.  During a change in administration he was forced to exile to Canada.  From Canada Amos continued toward his goal of creating a school in the Rwentutu area.  He raised funds from Canada and has worked with friends and colleagues in the area to make the school a reality.   Now that the school is up and running the connection with Canada is still strong.  Every year a team of teachers come from Canada to do professional development with the staff and deliver supplies.  This strong connection to those outside of the Rwentutu community place the teachers at Rwentutu in an interesting place.  They area accountable to the Canadians, however they know their school, their students and their needs much better than the Canadian teams do who stop in once a year.  It is a very unique and complex situation.

The Canadian team reports back to Amos and ultimately decide who keeps their jobs, who has what job and they decided if supporting the school is something they want to continue doing in the future.   I am very surprised that they feel as though they can make these recommendations after only two weeks in the school, with little observation of teachers.

The week before the Canadians came was very tense at school, our teachers were very nervous about meeting the Canadians expectations, maintaining their jobs and maintaining the monetary support from the Canadian team. 

The first week the Canadians were here there was a big disconnect between what they thought should be happening at the school, what they thought was happening at the school and what they thought would be best for the school. As they’ve been here and learned more about how the school is doing now the goals of the Canadians and the teachers at the school have become more streamlined.