Title: Coordinating fragmented retention interventions: toward an integrated education policy framework in Uganda
Authors: Dr. Arinaitwe Julius, Musiimenta Nancy, Akampurira Sarah
Volume: 10
Issue: 7
Pages: 330-339
Publication Date: 2026/07/28
Abstract:
This study investigated how fragmented student retention interventions could be coordinated into an integrated education policy framework within Christian-founded educational institutions in Uganda. The study was motivated by the persistence of student attrition and non-completion in church-founded secondary schools, faith-based universities, diocesan school networks, and seminaries, despite the concurrent implementation of multiple retention interventions by government agencies, church founding bodies and dioceses, and development partners. These interventions, comprising scholarship and bursary schemes, chaplaincy and pastoral support, guidance and counselling services, and feeding and welfare programmes, were found to operate largely in isolation from one another, raising the central problem of institutional fragmentation, weak coordination, and limited policy integration. Guided by a positivist paradigm, the study adopted a cross-sectional quantitative survey design and drew a stratified sample of 340 administrators, chaplaincy and pastoral staff, guidance and counselling officers, and policy and education officers across the four institutional categories and four regions of Uganda. Data were collected using a validated structured questionnaire and analysed using univariate statistics, bivariate Pearson correlation and chi-square procedures, and structural equation modelling (SEM). The univariate results revealed a moderately high level of fragmentation of retention interventions (M = 3.55, SD = 0.57) alongside comparatively lower coordination (M = 3.05) and policy integration (M = 2.95) scores. Bivariate analysis established strong, statistically significant relationships among fragmentation, coordination, policy integration, and retention outcomes (p < .001), while the chi-square test indicated that fragmentation cut across institutional categories rather than being confined to any single type. The structural model, which achieved a good fit to the data (CFI = 0.947, TLI = 0.932, RMSEA = 0.058, SRMR = 0.041), demonstrated that coordination mechanisms and policy integration jointly and significantly reduced fragmentation, which in turn exerted a significant negative effect on retention outcomes, while coordination and policy integration exerted direct positive effects on retention. The study concluded that fragmentation was not merely an administrative inconvenience but a structurally significant impediment to retention, and that an integrated policy framework anchored on strengthened inter-institutional coordination and harmonised policy guidelines was necessary to improve retention outcomes across Christian-founded institutions in Uganda. The study recommends the establishment of a national coordination framework for retention interventions in church-founded institutions, the harmonisation of policy guidelines between the Ministry of Education and Sports and church founding bodies, and the institutionalisation of joint monitoring and data-sharing mechanisms among stakeholders.