It has been established that changing of lecturers, expelling them or winding up their contracts summarily and bringing new others on board directly affects students' performance at universities and institutions of higher learning, reveals Sunrise's education desk. 

A survey commissioned by The Sunrise, based on interviews with selected students from the public universities of Makerere and Kyambogo shows that when students report back for a new academic year, for instance, and don't find their old lecturers, some of them would score dismally in their respective course units.

Some of the students interviewed said that they find difficulties in trying to locate their initial results when it so happens that the lecturer who taught them and marked their papers is no longer with them.

It is reported that when some of these lecturers change station, they don't bother about their students' results and other records, and, ultimately, they end up losing them. These eventually results in continuous "re-takes" by students, and failing to graduate at the end of the course.

A "re-take" is a term used by university students and lecturers to mean re-sitting the course units that a student might have failed.

"The lecturers are careless and they could just lose your marks and you have nowhere to get them. This is very dangerous considering that if you fail to get the accurate results you may end up not graduating," contends one student whose marks were misplaced by a lecturer who had shortly left the university. 

The same survey also revealed that a student who has got a re-take will find problems when he meets a new face of a lecturer in the new academic year. Such a lecturer may not be as effective as the former lecturer and the student may find it a problem relating with the new lecturer, and this, undoubtedly, may deal a blow to the students' performance.

"There are some lecturers who may not want to associate or relate with students for whatever reasons. A student would find it difficult to engage such a lecturer in case of missing or misrecorded marks in the previous semesters," says Dr. Khamalwa Wotsuna, a lecturer at Makerere's department of languages, adding that lecturers should listen to students' concerns and be friendly and down-to-earth with them.

"It also depends on how the student approaches the lecturer, if a student approaches the lecturer in a manner which is not appropriate, the offended lecturer may decide not to assist such a student. So, it's two-sided," Khamalwa continues.

Given such a dilemma, students are advised to keep in touch with their former lecturers to keep track of their records. The students should also cultivate a good relationship with their lecturers as such a relationship is vital to the students' performance.

"It's better for students to get all the contacts of their lecturers so that incase they happen to leave abruptly, they can easily be traced. This also goes along with maintaining a healthy relationship with lecturers," advises Khamalwa. 

The mostly affected students are those from Makerere University where lecturers are changed every now and then. It's the students that feel the brunt of such developments since they will not only fail to complete their studies due to loss of results, but also have to pay highly in terms of money.

Under the new fiscal structuring at Makerere University, a student pays Shs. 180,000 for each course unit, up from the previous Shs. 6000. This is not to include the killer tuition fees a student is to pay. So if you have a student having four retake exams in a semester, such a student would have to pay a whooping Shs. 720,000.

This, to a student on private sponsorship, may be too taxing given that most of the courses at Makerere and other public universities are way beyond most students' affordability  

When reached for comment to explain the link between students' performance and change of lecturers at Makerere University, in view that the problem is more pronounced at Makerere, the acting spokesperson of the university Rita Namisango failed to commit fully to the interview. She only said that change of lecturers is an issue that is not worth the alarm since it is not a new phenomenon at Makerere or any other  university.

"Lecturers have been going and coming and I wouldn't see how that would affect the students' performance," she said.

One of such fateful students is Mugisha Tadeo who is supposed to have completed his study programme at Kyambogo University in 2006. Some of his lecturers in the departments of languages and professional studies misentered his marks in three course units.

He only came to find out about the mis-recorded marks upon the release of the previous semester results which had been pinned on the notice boards. He saw that he had performed poorly and yet marks on scripts showed that he had scored highly with A's and B's. 

He couldn't trace the lecturers who had misplaced his marks since some of them, that were on part-time basis, had long left after marking exams and he did not have any clue as to where they had gone.

Mugisha had nothing do other than wait for the new academic year to resit the same exams. But as fate would again have it, the course units were new and he ended up failing some of them.
"if the previous lecturers hadn't misrecorded my results I would have left this university a long time ago but am still here trying to go through the retakes.

James Bulenzibuto, Kyambogo University public relations manager urges students to always crosscheck with their respective departments to ensure that the marks in their scripts are the very marks entered in the databanks of the departments.

"If a student finds out that the marks on his scripts are not the same as the marks displayed on notice boards then they should follow up the matter with their respective departments and the heads of departments can then corroborate with the former lecturer to rectify the anomalies," he says.

However, Belenzibuto does not agree that change of lecturers significantly affects the students' performance since the onus of excelling squarely lies with the students themselves.

"If you have got a retake and you come back to prepare for that particular paper, then do what you are supposed to do as a student because it's not the lecturer going to re-sit for you. Even if you find that there has been restructuring in the courses, present your petition to the head of department and they will advice you on what to do," he explains.

He further submits that the students should be keen on their results and cross-check with their lecturers immediately they receive their scripts other than wait until the final results are released.

On the other hand, Belenzibuto does not refute the fact that some lecturers are careless to the point of losing their students' results, and that a good proportion of the retake cases result from errors in filing marks in databanks. blog comments powered by Disqus

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