Since 1997, the Government of Uganda has implemented the Universal Primary Education Policy. This followed closely the promulgation of a Constitution in 1995 that established education as a right for all. These reforms were also in consonance with the global education reforms as espoused in the 1990 Jomtien World Conference on Education for All (EFA) which called for increased access to education as well as an improvement in learning achievement. In 2000, we had the Dakar Framework of Action that reinforced all these global and national reforms as seen in Goal 6 that calls for "improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognizable and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills". These goals have been assimilated in the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and MDG 2 now specifically speaks to Universal Primary Education.

In Uganda, since the introduction of UPE, effective ways and means to make tangible improvements in both UPE service delivery (teachers, curricula, facilities, inspection and support supervision) and outcomes (learning) have been of focus. The Government of Uganda and development partners through the Ministry of Education and Sports have made enormous investments in the primary sub-sector to improve quality in terms of curricula, infrastructure and learning environment, teaching/learning process and learning achievements. The UPE policy in Uganda received a major boost with the enactment of the new Education Act, 2008 by Parliament which makes primary education compulsory for all children. In addition, the sector adopted the Quality Enhancement Initiative (QEI) - a flagship program within the UPE program for the improvement of primary education specifically targeting the twelve districts with the worst education indicators in the country. The sector also adopted other support policies to guide its efforts to provide quality primary education, including the instruction in local language policy which is intended to support the on-going implementation of the thematic curriculum in lower primary. However, the subsector continues to register low learning outcomes.

The Uganda National Examination Board (UNEB) has since 2003 been conducting annual national assessments of literacy and numeracy competencies at primary 3 and 6 level. The recent National Assessment of Progress in Education (2009) indicates that in terms of proficiency in Numeracy and Literacy of children in the sampled classes of P.3 and P.6 still stands below 50%. Notwithstanding the strong government commitment major constraints and challenges remain, and these include:

• Low community participation and ownership of education activities
• Inadequate capacity particularly at the district level
• Inequity in primary education provision particularly due to a wide variation in access to preprimary education in the country
• Slow recruitment and deployment of qualified teachers
• Inadequate school inspection services
• Poor communication between the districts and schools
• Inadequate provision of instructional materials for implementation of the thematic curriculum at lower primary
• Inadequate training of teachers in the delivery of the thematic curriculum
• Inadequate institutional capacity for planning, implementation and management particularly at the school level
• Inadequate infrastructure in primary schools due to low funding
• High attrition of teachers
• High repetition and drop out of pupil

The Uwezo initiative responds to this context. Uwezo, meaning "capability" in Kiswahili, is a four year initiative to improve competencies in literacy and numeracy among children aged 6-16 years in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda through an innovative, civic-driven and public accountability approach to social change. Uwezo intends to enable policy makers as well as ordinary citizens - i.e. parents, students, local communities and public at large - to become aware of actual levels of children’s literacy and numeracy, and build on that awareness to stimulate practical and policy change across East Africa.

In Uganda the initiative is hosted by the Uganda National NGO Forum (www.ngoforum.or.ug) and regionally within Twaweza (www.twaweza.org). Uwezo is a citizen-led assessment that complements education assessments conducted by Government. It is based on the concern that educational assessment studies have increased across East Africa but the use and impact appears to be limited. Further, assessments tend to be overly technocratic and complex in nature, and are difficult for most people to understand. Access to their findings remains limited to small circles, and their dissemination seems to have failed to stimulate the public imagination or lead to policy and social change.

Uwezo seeks to fill this gap by generating household based data on children’s literacy and numeracy across East Africa, in a manner that informs the public, stimulates countrywide debate, and creates demand for policy change from the bottom-up. Uwezo builds its design and methodology from the pioneering approach of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER, www.asercentre.org) in India.

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