Teacher absenteeism is still one of the major challenges facing the education sector across the African continent and according to the World Bank, one the top factors leading to poor academic performance in many schools across sub-Saharan Africa. Uganda is no exception. Research puts Uganda at the second-highest country with teacher absenteeism ranking at 27% in a study conducted among 21 countries. This has trickled down to the National Teachers’ Colleges, institutions responsible for producing out qualified and competent teachers to secondary schools in Uganda.

Management within the colleges has long since relied on a paper format of record-keeping to monitor the attendance of teaching staff. This meant that each teacher would have to physically sign into a book usually available in the staff room. The problem with this method is that it proved to be challenging when analysing teacher attendance as data was manually extracted and easily misused.

But paper is now a thing of the past. The Teachers’ colleges have embraced the move to digitize their record keeping by using an attendance management system dubbed ‘Time-on-task’ to fight absenteeism of both teaching and non-teaching staff.

The Time-on-task tool is designed to monitor NTC staff’s daily attendance through registration and results compilation with focus on their hours and days in the colleges.  It uses free and open-source software to collect data known as KoBoToolbox that is easily installed on any android mobile device. Moving from paper attendance sheets to a digital format has simplified the collection, analysis and the ability to share data on teacher attendance, making it easy to monitor teacher attendance within the colleges. 

The time on task tool currently captures teacher attendance data daily. Both teaching and non-teaching staff sign in and out using a tablet installed within the college. The sign-in process is quite brief as the application takes a selfie as a form of signature and registers the time of the selfie. Once staff have complied with this step, the data collected is then uploaded to the server every month where it is analysed in Excel. Once the analysis is finalized, results are then shared with both staff and management of the colleges including the Ministry of Education-TIET department.

This type of monitoring provides greater assurance to the colleges’ administrators that their teaching staffs are where they should be and at the right time. 

“Before the introduction of Time-on-task, staff absenteeism rate was very high because as management, we did not have a strong system in place to monitor staff.” Evelyn Lanyero Principal NTC Kaliro.

This simple tool has had a huge impact. Since its introduction in May 2019, more and more staff are accepting the tool and using it to register their attendance during school hours. In the first month of its implementation, 26% of the staff across the five National Teachers’ Colleges registered using the digital tool in June 2019 and this number grew to 85% in December 2019.

“Time-on-task has made us move to 21st-century technology and acquainted to using digital tools in everyday life.” David Physical Education Lecturer NTC Kaliro.

The Time-on-task digital tool has contributed to a positive mind shift towards digitalization. Due to its efficiency and effectiveness in curbing teacher absenteeism, it has stimulated digital literacy and acceptance of more digital tools in management and in teaching & learning. This includes the use of quick-books for financial management, koha for library management and ICT tools (padlet, Google Drive) for teaching and learning within the college.

Other institutions in Uganda, both public and private in education and non-education sectors are showing high interest in the tool and have requested to have it installed to track the attendance of their staff. One of these is the Muni University that is located a stone through away from National Teachers’ College Muni. After witnessing the impact of the Time-on-task in Muni Teachers’ College, they expressed interest in adopting the tool to monitor attendance within the university.

The TIET department of the Ministry of Education and Sports has also embraced this tool to monitor the attendance of staff within the Ministry. Dr Jane Egau the Commissioner TIET had to say about the tool.

“When we saw what was happening in the NTCs, we also requested to get this tool for the department and have noted an improvement in staff attendance. In addition to what we have seen and experienced, it is also our plan to extend it to other institutions because within teaching, time is so important and I think as we train teachers, we need to instil this character in them and this is a perfect tool to provide the example.” Even though the tool seems to stand out in curbing teacher absenteeism, the project intends to upgrade the application beyond tracking attendance to measure the quality of teaching by providing feedback forms to students.

This is part of the digital transformation of National Teachers’ Colleges by the Enabel Teacher Training Education Project in partnership with the Ministry of Education and sports. It is also in line with the strategic priorities of the Digital for Development (D4D) policy by the Belgian development cooperation.