Members of Parliament (MPs) recently attributed the increased mental health cases in Uganda to the gruesome early morning reporting of young children, denying them enough time to rest and further overloading them with assignments. The legislators called on the government to expedite the enactment of regulations for the Mental Health Act.

According to Sarah Opendi, the Tororo District women representative, during their school days, they would wake up at 6 or 7 a.m., but they are now MPs and Ministers. She, therefore, asked why the current education system should stress the children of Uganda. adding that, as MPs, they can have a session when Parliament opens to discuss these matters and end the madness in schools.

To start with, the start time for most classes hasn’t changed significantly; it’s between 7:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. However, it’s parents who wake children so early in the morning to avoid traffic. Most good schools are concentrated in town centers, thus causing congestion.

A child is dropped home at 7 p.m. loaded with homework, completes it at 9 p.m., and goes to bed around 10 p.m. The same child wakes up at 4 a.m. to prepare for school and is picked up at 5:30 a.m. by the school van, which goes on collecting others from different places. By the time the child reaches school, at 7:30 a.m. or 8:00 a.m., they are already tired and exhausted from the one and a half-hour drive.

Conversely, the government is partly to blame, starting with physical planning. The narrow and potholed roads lead to traffic jam, which is why parents wake up very early. But also, some schools are established in hard-to-reach sites with no standards. As a result, homework is given to increase examination success, which is the selling point for most schools, if not all, especially business-minded private schools.

Sadly, the schools with fewer traffic jam in their little towns mimic the models used by Kampala schools. It is indeed a complex phenomenon whose details need the government’s intervention, and one would say it is multi-sectoral incompetencies piling upon each other and hence causing the mess.

Sometimes it is not entirely the school’s fault; the parents who wake up the children early so that they beat the early morning traffic jam, drop them off at school, and proceed to work and go about their activities also contribute to the problem.

The rationale for the numerous homework and long-hour classes and the weekend classes needs to be regulated. Hopefully the new curriculum and examination system address this problem; otherwise, the children will be greatly affected.