After the rebuild: Northern Uganda's schools come back strong

The schools of the north carried a burden no league table records: years in which conflict emptied classrooms and scattered teachers. Two decades on, a cohort of schools in Gulu, Lira and Kitgum has not merely recovered but begun to compete nationally.

Their comeback rests on patient institution-building, returning staff, rebuilt boarding, and partnerships that survived the lean years. We spoke to heads who taught through the displacement and now run schools their own former pupils send children to. The story is less about catching up than about a region quietly reclaiming a place it always held.