Predicting the Future: The Case of Madrassa Resource Centre Primary Schools Improvement Intervention in Uganda
Madrassa Resource Centre (MRC), Uganda, is an Aga Khan Foundation Pre-school Early Childhood Development Community Based Programme. It has been operating for over 12 years in Kampala City, Wakiso and Mpigi districts. The programme started as a simple project requested by local Muslim leaders to support transformation of their traditional Madrassas into quality pre-schools that offer both secular and Islamic spiritual and traditional values to children.
The success of the pre-schools led communities to establish primary schools. Running and managing these new primary schools has proved a major challenge. It is against this challenge that EUPEC has been called upon to assist.
The challenge for EUPEC is how to reconcile appropriately its approach and that of MRCU. MRCU supports a Muslim community-based integrated programme that addresses Early Childhood Development issues based on a tailor-made curriculum that caters for Islamic values and principles; whereas EUPEC is purely secular and based on professional assumption that there was a need regarding quality of education in primary schools. In addition, MRC deliberately targets Muslim female school-dropouts, while EUPEC deals with professionally qualified teachers (regardless of their sex) who deliver their services based on the national primary school curriculum.
This paper presents a predictive projection of what the future will be for the alternative intervention. In its findings, the paper predicts that for the new MRC community primary schools to benefit from the EUPEC intervention, they will have to undergo the loss of one of their core values and practices, hence, "integration" as promoted by MRCU and practiced by MRC pre-schools. This is because primary schools in Uganda (public and otherwise) are all affected by national policies that govern them. Primary schools in the nation all follow one national curriculum. It is also true that Kyambogo University, the fountain of teacher education in Uganda, and other related institutions do not produce teachers based on the MRC approach. This therefore means that there are no professionally trained teachers to further the MRC integrated approach to teaching. This scenario will inevitably force the new MRC related community primary schools to abide by the national arrangement, which will also warrant MRCU and EUPEC to redesign yet another more appropriate intervention strategy that will be responsive to the ideals and desires of the local communities.
On the basis of the findings, the author suggests that MRCU should redefine the age of their targeted children to include children from three years to nine. This will mean that MRCU will be catering for pre-school age (Nurseries) and the lower primary school age "primary one, two and three" (Kindergartens). This arrangement will enable MRCU to continue empowering Muslim girls/women dropouts. The assumption being that the programme will not be directly affected by national policies that govern fully-fledged primary schools in Uganda. The case being so, MRCU will be in a position to continue giving professional support to these schools with much ease.
Data for this work has been collected through the use of future research methods, analysing available MRCU and EUPEC archive records and related literature.