News up-date

Finance.
New budgets embrace the future

The new budget for 2007-08 was earlier this month approved by the institute board. The budget includes savings for depreciation, construction of classrooms and workshops, Building maintenance, and staff training.

The main objective of the budget is to maintain and plan for renewing our assets through depreciation account and money for Building Maintenance. Furthermore the budget address the rapid increasing number of trainees and general growth of the institute by building three new classrooms, two new offices, one new ME workshop and a Tailoring & hairdressing workshop and rebuild the walls of the joinery shop.

Left is St.Joseph's Garage. The garage is currently being painted in order to preserve the wood work

Also, funds has been allocated for HRD where we are aiming at the supporting the top management in further studies in order to build capacities to deal with the institutes general and rapid development.

The funds allocated for class rooms and offices construction only include the brick walls because we do not have sufficient funds for floor, windows and doors, ceiling, wiring etc However, a proposal for full funding of the classroom/office block has been send to one of our development partners and we are confident that they will consider the proposal.

We keep in mind that we will need at least 6 more classrooms by February 2009 in order to accommodate all the 3 x 3 years of Government supported Juniors under UPPET.

A classrooms without floor, ceilings, windows and doors are poor conditions for training and it will affect the academic standards. Therefore more proposals be developed and send to potential donors.

Below is theSite Plan of proposed sites for Mech.
Engineering workshop and the site for the new classroom/office block

Construction of 2 new workshops confirmed by IP-BTVET

The institute has been selected for the third phase of Investment Program-BTVET. The program has today confirmed that they will construct 2 new workshops for mechanical engineering and tailoring/hairdressing respectively.

Furthermore, they have confirmed that at least the tailoring/hair dressing workshop will be fully equipped. The program is also expected to donate other equipments such as an internet café and a metal lathe for ME.

Academics.
Reaching for the sky

We are still waiting for the results from the June/July exams, but we expect improvements from the last year’s results.

The institute is confident that the institute’s goals will be reached. The goals are for a minimum of 50% of our candidates should at least pass the exams this year and that number should increase to 75% by 2009. We are confident that the improvements in terms of staff, materials and class monitoring should get us close to our goal. We pledge to our students/costumers to pursue and reach that goal.

The total no of students is as follows:

	Apprentice	Junior 1	Craft 1	Craft 2	Total
TGC	0	15	0	0	15
MVM	34	23	57	28	143
ME	2	0	19	10	31
BCP	10	10	19	11	50
C&J	10	0	4	5	19
EI	0	0	23	8	31
Total	56	48	122	62	288

We expect to receive another 60 junior students on the UPPET program in February 2008 and another 60 in 2009. Furthermore, we plan to start a 6 month ICT course early next year whereby we estimate the total number of trainees at the institute to reach 450 by February 2009.

Discipline
A chain is as strong as the weakest link

Improved lesson monitoring and our offer of a free term has improved the disipline at the institute. Unfortunately the free term seemed to benefit some students as they deceived their parents and bourght mobile phones.

Knowing our owne institute and considering incidents at other institutions, the biggest challenge for our institute and for education in Uganda at large is in-discipline. The RDC for Kabarole said: “students do not burn their dorm’ just because of incidents at a disco….”

Please understand the term “discipline” as something, which involve the intyre institute, not just the students. All must do what we are supposed to do whether we are members of the Board, students or instructors.

Personnel
The more the merrier

The institute has now about 95 employees attached on various terms. In general they are committed and well skilled for their respective duties.

As mentioned earlier the institute plans to continuously develop the human recourse through internal and external training. Currently the institute has one MVM technician for a one year course in Germany and two from ME has just returned Austria for a 5 weeks course. One instructor is being sponsored for a CTTE while two instructors are on a TOT course.

On the right is Mr. Deo Baguma during the training at the institute's Partner institution LBS-Neunkirchen, Austria

All the trainings are very beneficial for our Institute, but at times the trainings have been bringing some challenges due to short notices and insufficient information. However UGAPRIVI was requested , by the principal, to improvement the notice and describtions in order for us to maximize our gain.

The HR development is seen as an incentive to our employees as their remuneration in general is low and due to the fact that we cannot afford to provide all the trainings we wish. However, we have budgeted for upgrading the top management in the coming year.

The post as principal has been advertised and there are 9 applicants for the post. The interviewes vill conducted on the 24^th October. The a handover is expected within this year. The out-going principal will take on new duties as organizational advisor.

The out-going Principal says "Thanks to all students, Staff, the Board, the Diocese, national and international development partners for the joint efforts, which has borne its fruits. St. Joseph's Technical Institute, now has more students, more diverse programs and the institute is a well known and attractive institution. Also new challenges has come, but by standing and acting united and disiplined we shall be even more successful in the future."