Government tasked to ban advertising of schools

Kampala. Educationists have asked the Education and Sports ministry to stop schools from advertising their services, saying it is promoting unhealthy competition and exams malpractices.
The proposal was captured in one of the resolutions of the Education and Sports sector review meeting in Kampala on Wednesday.
The ministry’s technical team promised to refine the position paper before issuing the guidelines.
Rev Fr John Byamukama, the coordinator of the Uganda Joint Christian Council, said advertising education institutions has encouraged commercialisation of education, resulting in bad practices such as exam cheating. He said in order to get rid of malpractices, the ministry must ban any education institution that advertises its services.
“If we want to achieve excellence, we have identified an area that is affecting our service delivery. The advertising of education institutions has brought confusion. This is making everybody sleepless to attain high grades. Every child, teacher and parent is paying through the nose to get grades,” Fr Byamukama said.
“It has promoted exams malpractice that has killed our system today. What should be done to stop this commercialisation and stop advertising performance?” he added.
Education minister Janet Museveni agreed with Fr Byamukama’s proposal.
Mr Patrick Kaboyo, the national secretary of the Federation of Non-State Education Institutions, an umbrella body that brings private schools together, welcomed the move but said it might not be easy for the ministry to regulate individual institutions’ publicity in a free market economy.
Nevertheless he suggested that government sets up guidelines and works with the institutions to improve the messages.