SUUBI SECONDARY AND VOCATIONAL COLLEGE

“Integrated for meaningful education”

Concept paper 2013
Developed by Ssemwogerere David - Suubi Complex Director

1.0 Introduction:
Education is one of the long lasting poverty alleviating strategy. There is a growing body of
evidence suggesting that spending time in school is an effective strategy for promoting
development including improved family health, nutrition, and reduced fertility rates. Its also
further noted that the role of education in poverty eradication and social transformation, in
close co-operation with other social sectors, is very crucial; it is one of the key factors in
wealth creation and improved livelihoods.

In line of the above, Suubi Centre and HUG-Australia is seeking to construct a purpose-built
school to provide practical vocational and secondary education for students from within
Lubanda Village and neighborhoods in Kisekka Sub-County and Lwengo District, South
Western Uganda. In additional to vocational and conventional academic subjects, the school
shall also provide community-based projects/training development programs, outside of
school hours, all of which can be attended by parents and older family members to enrich
their education and skills in various areas, thus bringing some cohesiveness into the
community.

The school project fits right in Suubi Centre’s mission, which is “To create an empowering
environment for the rural people of Lubanda village and the neighboring communities
through strategic planning, hands on training, education and appropriate sustainable
livelihoods”.

Currently HUG and Suubi Centre are running a number of community based development
projects focusing on sustainable livelihoods, and improving social-economic situations. (See
information at www.hug.org.au) Since its inception in 2008, Suubi Centre has been supported
by HUG-Australia. Together we are excited by the prospect of adding a seconadary school to
the already very successful achievement of the Suubi Development. In fact, HUG has shown
a great willingness to continue to raise funds through its networks, friends, fundraiser events,
grant applications and sale of calendars to achieve this goal.

2.0 Background:
As mentioned above, Suubi Centre and HUG-Australia have, over the past 5 years,
successfully been running a number of community based development projects focusing on
improved sustainable livelihoods, social and economic situations. These projects include,
provision of rainwater tanks and garden tools to partner schools, Tailoring, Knitting, Crafts
making, Coffee seedlings raising, Computer Training, Agriculture and promotion of Sports and
Music, Dance and Drama talents. In addition to this the Suubi Comunity Health Clinic was

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constructed and now serves a far wider area beyond Lubanda village, by providing much
needed improved health service.

We believe that, with better health services and meaningful education, coupled with other the
social services Suubi Centre and HUG are currently promoting in the community, we will
contiue to move towards the holistic transformation and empowerment of Lubanda village and
surrounding neighborhoods.

Learning from the past five years experience of working with the wider community we have
come to realize that there very few quality secondary schools in the area and they are
focusing almost enirely on the conventional academic subjects. This leaves no options for
students to try out other potential skills, which may infact be very benefitial in their adult lives.

It is our belief that every one/child is has different talents and interest. We also believe that
every one may not necessarily continue with academic education up to the University level,
but they will still need skills to enable him/her to live a better life, no matter what level of
education they stop at. The current model of education in the area see many students leave
school without any practical skills to use in their adut lives as way of supporting themsleves
and their families in the future. This has accelerated the levels of poverty, not only in Lwengo
District but also in many other parts of the country. This happens because without any hands
on practical, vocational skills these girls and boys will always depend on their families, who
also have little means of getting an income to support everyone.

Its from this background that Suubi Centre and HUG, are proposing to set up a Secondary
and Vocational College that will work as a demonstrational Centre in providing meaningful
education to the rest of the schools in the District and Uganda as a country. We strongly
believe that conventional academic education can be integrated with vocational skills training,
a component that is largely missing in many schools around the country and Lwengo District
in particular.

3.0 Problem analysis:

Quality education and conducive learning environment in the area is still lacking. Currently,
the existing secondary schools, which are also sparsely scattered in the area, mainly focus on
the conventional academic subjects that leave students with no vocational skills acquired for
the entire period of four or six years spent at school. Vocational skills would help them create
their own jobs and improve livelihoods after secondary school, even with out University
education.

Secondary schools in the area are also currently challeged in providing a well rounded
acedemic education. The inadequacy of laboratory science equipment in the existing schools
makes it difficult for the students to perform well in science subjects. This eventually denies
them a chance to pursue science related courses in their careers such as medicine or
engineering. In fact, it was after HUG was able to provide Suubi Centre with a Nursing

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Course scholarship opportunity in 2013, that we discovered almost no-one from the
surrounding villages qualifed to apply. This was because they did not have the prerequisite
requirements for the nursing course of having passed all science subjects.

In the current settings, schools are also seen as only for students. Parents can only interact
with their children during the official visitation days. At Suubi Secondary and Vocational
College, we intend to create an place where students and parents will be incouraged to
interact during the community based project trainings. In this way we will be providing an
environment where students, parents and elder members of the community will be able to
learn from each other.

In view of all the above, for meaningful education, we are proposing an integrated
conventional- vocational school that places equal importance on both academic and
vocational skills. Ultimately we believe this will allow everyone to reach their full potential in
various life skills.

4.0 The Suubi Secondary and Vocational School will:

• Enable students to reach their full potential by providing them with practical integrated
education and an opportunity to develop and promote their other non-academic potential
skills. Sports, Music, Dance and Drama, Baking, Tailoring, Knitting, Mechanical repairing, On-
farm agricultural skills, Wood work, Metal fabrication, Brick making, among others, will
available subjects for students to be involved in. This in turn will help students to mature
psychologically, emotionally and develop good social, economic and vocational skills.

• Keep families together in a community based context, as the school is targeting students
working together with their parents and elders in the community to find solutions for locally
faced challenges. This will impact positively on the wider district and help create a supportive
community environment.

• Provide local employment and market for various products /produce in the surrounding
communities. For example, builders and building materials are expected to be sourced from
within the village, Suubi Centre ladies will be able to make school jumpers and uniforms for
the school and staff and students will buy produce from the local trading centres.

• Assist in the reduction of illiteracy, violence and crime by keeping particulary the youth
occupied rather than sitting idle. Community-based projects, established to engage
community members outside of school hours, will coninue to improved the livelihoods of
household in the surrounding area.

5.0 Time scale:

The timescale for constructing the school shall be in phases (see the plan). We beleive that
everything we have included on this plan will ultimately enable the school, and therefore the

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students, to reach their full potential but we obviously understand that construction will need
to be done as funding and resources become available.

6.0 Nature of operational set up:

Once the school is open, it will run indefinitely. However, in the first year of operation, the
school will start with Senior one which will roll on to Senior two, three and four up to senior six
in the subsequent years. A maximum of 50 students per class (six classes) is expected to be
appropriate in order to allow effective interactions with the teachers for meaningful education.
The school will target students from Lubanda Village and its neighborhoods that we think will
use the acquired skills and knowledge to develop their own communities.

At full operation it is expected that we will to provide education to 350 students and employ
approximately 25 trained/qualified teachers and 4 administrative staff.

7.0 Sustainability of the School:

The long term sustainablitly of the purposed school is something we have given much
consideration to. With this in mind we propose to start operation with five teachers, each
recieving a monthly salary of 500,000UGX. This will therefore require 2,500,000 per month to
cover these wages. The first year intake of students will be 50 in number, each of which will
be required to pay 100,000UGX per term. This will give us a total of 5,000,000 available over
the three month period of each school term, therefore leaving a shortfall of 2,500,000 per
term, of which there are 3 in total.

During this initial first year HUG will source support to cover the shortfall in teachers wages
and for day to day matrials that will enable the school to run effectively. Over the 5 years
since HUG and Suubi Centre have been working together a number of individuals have
approached HUG in the hope to supporting individual children in Uganda. Although this is not
something HUG has been keen to facilitate in the past we now see this an opportunity
whereby these people may wish to support a teachers wage. Their support would then
positively impact on many lives rather than one individual.

However our aim is for Suubi Secondary and Vocational College to ultimately become self
sustainable in the future. So in the 2nd year of operation 100 student will be enrolled at the
school, each paying 100,000 UGX giving us 10,000,000UGX available each term. This will
therfore be able to cover teachers wages etc during this year. As subsequent year levels are
added more funds from school fees will become avaliable therefore allowing us to add
additional teachers as they are required.

8.0 School Location:

The school will be situated in a rural area of Lubanda Village, Kikenene parish,Kisekka Sub-
couty, Lwengo District and will be part of the wider extension of Suubi Centres’ Community
development projects.

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9.0 Budget estimates:
Please see attached excel sheets.

10.0 Conclusion:
After 5 years of successfully integrating Suubi Education and Community Centre in to the
day-to-day lives of people in Lubanda Village we see this as an opportune time to capitalize
on the communities’ keenness to be involved. They have shown a great willingness to learn
and a desire to work towards a better life for themselves. To this end we see a community
Secondary and Vocational School as the next logical step in providing a holistic project that
truly provides hope (Suubi) and empowerment to the local community.