A long-running dispute between Kyambogo University and a group of its former students has reignited questions over what actually qualifies someone to teach in Uganda’s secondary schools, with the university insisting that a Diploma in Sports Management was never meant to produce classroom teachers.
The graduates, who joined the university in 2017 and are led by Haruna Muwanguzi and Julius Kimanje, say they enrolled expecting to come out as secondary school Physical Education teachers. Instead, they were awarded Diplomas in Sports Management, a qualification that has since been rejected by the Ministry of Education and Sports, the Education Service Commission, and other potential employers when the graduates sought jobs as PE teachers.
Kyambogo University sees it differently. According to Vice Chancellor Prof. Eli Katunguka, the graduates completed exactly what their academic records show, an accredited Diploma in Sports Management, not a teacher training programme. He explained that any reference to a Diploma in Physical Education and Sports Management was the result of an admission error corrected early in the course, and clarified that PE falls under the department of education while sports management sits in the department of sports science.
What Actually Makes Someone A Teacher
Education expert Prof. George Wilson Kasule weighed in on the dispute, explaining that knowing a subject well is not the same as being trained to teach it. He described teacher education as a distinct professional pathway that combines subject knowledge with the skills needed to run a classroom, plan lessons, and assess learners.
Kasule pointed out that every recognised teacher training programme includes a set of compulsory foundation courses, among them the psychology, sociology, and philosophy of education, alongside pedagogy, curriculum studies, education management, assessment, guidance and counselling, and educational technology. He added that supervised teaching practice, where trainees are placed in real schools to teach under supervision, is another core requirement student teachers must complete.
A review of the graduates’ transcripts reportedly shows four semesters heavy on sports management, sports administration, and various sports disciplines, plus general courses like communication skills and computer applications. None of the professional education courses Kasule described, including teaching practice, appear on those transcripts.
Katunguka has also pushed back on the graduates directly, asking them to specify which teaching subjects they would actually present for registration, since their diploma was never structured as a teacher education qualification in the first place. He suggested the push for recognition may be linked to how competitive and well paid PE positions have become in secondary schools, where the subject is now treated among the science-related disciplines.
Katunguka’s advice to the graduates has been to treat their Diploma in Sports Management as a stepping stone rather than a teaching credential, and to enrol for a proper education degree that includes Physical Education and other recognised teaching subjects if they want to join the profession.
The graduates, however, are standing their ground. They have written to the university requesting a meeting with the Vice Chancellor and are pushing for two things: formal letters confirming their qualification is valid for employment and further studies, and compensation for what they call wasted years, lost earnings, and emotional distress.
Muwanguzi told Uganda Radio Network that the group is still waiting on the university’s response, maintaining that they enrolled and completed the programme genuinely believing they were training to become PE teachers.
The National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) has since stepped into the matter, writing to Kyambogo University on 3rd July 2026 asking it to respond to the graduates’ complaints. NCHE says it has not yet made any determination on the merits of the case, noting only that Kyambogo had previously been accredited to run a Diploma in Physical Education and Sports Management back in 2010, and a separate Diploma in Sports Management and Administration in 2015.
That history is now central to the graduates’ questions, as they seek clarity on why they ended up with a qualification that appears distinct from either of the two programmes NCHE says the university was accredited to offer.
CampusBee will follow this story as it develops.
