As the government prepares to overhaul teacher payment by linking pay more closely to days attended or lessons delivered, education experts and union leaders are urging a more thought-through approach.They warn that over-reliance on financial penalties risks demotivating teachers without addressing deeper structural problems. The proposal, first reported by New Vision, aims to tackle chronic teacher absenteeism, a long-standing issue that has undermined learning outcomes in Uganda’s public schools. Teopista Birungi Mayanja, a seasoned education expert and founder of the Uganda National Teachers’ Union, expressed scepticism about attaching pay directly to performance metrics in the absence of a robust management framework.“Managing performance involves motivating workers,” she said in an interview. “Sometimes when you use too much of a carrot and a stick, it demotivates.” Mayanja, who is a member of the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunities, argued that Uganda still lacks an effective performance management system for teachers, especially. “Supervision itself is a motivator,” she explained. “Knowing that I don’t want my supervisor to find out when I have not done it, so let me do it. That in itself is a motivator.” Mayanja highlighted the often unclear or under-resourced roles of head teachers, district education officers, and school inspectors, who are the ‘middle tier professionals’ who should anchor accountability. “What is the role of a head teacher in the school? What is the role of an education officer and the inspectors of schools? Government also needs to think so much about the role of those middle-tier professionals,” she stressed. She also flagged practical challenges with a ‘lessons taught’ model. “The teacher can attend, and he doesn’t teach. He’s in class, but nothing is happening. So the paper shows you this is what I taught when he has not taught,” she noted, underscoring the difficulty of verification without strong classroom oversight. Aron Mugaiga, general secretary of the Uganda Professional Science Teachers’ Union, acknowledged the good intentions behind the proposal but cautioned that stakeholders first learned of it through media reports. He urged the government to address root causes, particularly welfare issues. Many teachers, he noted, still struggle with inadequate pay and resort to side jobs to make ends meet, sometimes skipping school days. Others who live far from school without transport allowances may stay home on non-timetable days while still handling planning and marking from afar. Mugaiga also questioned the fairness of singling out teachers: “Why would the government single out teachers on this attendance-based payment and not other civil servants, yet they are all serving the same public?”Recycled proposal This is not the first time the idea has surfaced. Around 2010, when absenteeism was particularly acute, with reports suggesting up to 30 per cent of lessons missed, the then minister of Education, the late Geraldine Namirembe Bitamazire, floated paying teachers per lesson taught or days attended instead of a fixed monthly salary. A teacher monitors the work on learners during a digital lessonEducationists and policy analysts at the time described the move as ‘radical and contentious’, and the proposal ultimately did not take off. Recent data paint a troubling picture, putting Uganda among countries with the highest teacher absenteeism in Africa, with some surveys indicating that over 50 per cent of payroll-listed teachers may not be delivering lessons in the classroom. Earlier World Bank-linked studies placed absence rates in public primary schools between 17 per cent and 30 per cent, contributing to an estimated loss of billions of shillings in instructional time and public resources, as teacher salaries consume the bulk of the education budget. Over the years, the government has experimented with various interventions. The latest is the TELA smartphone-based system, rolled out to provide real-time monitoring of teacher and head teacher attendance using GPS and biometric features. Head teachers receive devices to log presence against school timetables, with plans to integrate TELA data into the human capital management and payroll systems. Under the reported model, teachers attending at least 95 per cent of required days could qualify for full pay, subject to explanations for shortfalls. However, the Auditor General has previously flagged technical defects in TELA that affected system stability, user confidence, and effective utilisation. Teachers are officially expected to be at school from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday, regardless of timetable slots, yet many appear only for scheduled lessons or not at all.Allan Mugerwa, a parent in Nansana, drew attention to the wide variations in teacher attendance across different school types. He observed that private schools, as well as serious and well-performing public schools in urban areas, often experience low or even negligible levels of teacher absenteeism. To him, this is a phenomenon that requires urgent study and replication across the country before the government rushes with its new proposal. “Why is it that teachers in private schools and public schools, such as the likes of Mengo, Gayaza, or even Kololo SS, are not absent, but teachers in rural schools are?” Mugerwa asked. “It might be due to parents, head teachers, or the additional PTA money given to teachers as an allowance or something. Now in between, there lies the cure for absenteeism,” he opined Echoing Mugerwa’s sentiment, Mayanja advocated for evidence-based, systemic reforms rather than isolated measures. “Reforms that are brought in isolation sometimes don’t work. They are not backed up by evidence. And evidence should be used to strengthen the system,” she said, warning that “putting resources in a broken system is also wasting resources.” She further added that the first motivation lies in building a strong system with clear structures, purpose, and supportive supervision. “There is no supervision. It is one of the most documented motivators of workers, and the teachers are also workers.”Absenteeism at a glance Teacher absenteeism remains one of the highest contributors to poor learning outcomes in Uganda’s public schools, where pupil-teacher ratios in government primary schools often exceed 60:1. Factors frequently cited include low motivation, distant postings without housing or transport support, heavy workloads, and weak accountability chains. Some teachers moonlight in private schools, where closer supervision exists, and show up reliably there. A World Bank paper, “No More Cutting Class? Reducing Teacher Absence and Providing Incentives for Performance,” noted that across developing countries, surprise visits reveal high absence rates. It concluded that improving teachers’ day-to-day marginal incentives, both financial and non-financial, is often the most effective lever, as it influences the morning decision whether to attend. Recent calls, including from First Lady and Education minister Janet Museveni, have emphasised community involvement and technology-driven oversight to reduce absenteeism below 5 per cent by 2030. The post Experts urge caution as govt moves to link teacher pay to attendance appeared first on The Observer.