Government should address rising fees problem

Dr John Chrysostom Muyingo, the State Minister for Higher Education

What you need to know:

The issue: Increasing tuition
Our view: It is important for the government to know that the biggest challenge parents face today is how to afford fees and the countless materials the so-called schools with requisite standards demand.

It is more than a month now since schools opened for the first term 2018. Granted. However, what is intriguing many parents, guardians and students is the continuous increase in school fees alongside a series of material demands. While private schools were the initial major culprits in this, public and government-aided schools, to an extent, are following suit.
When last year, for instance, school administrators claimed that they were forced to hike school fees to cater for rising cost of food and other items (following a prolonged drought then), the administrators are not giving plausible reasons for not reducing the fees now that the drought is behind us. They are instead increasing the tuition! Sadly, the high fees and endless items demand that include reams of paper, baking flour, rice, cement, exercise books, slashers, and scrubbing brooms, toilet tissues, etc, continue to send away the children of the poor from some schools.

Ultimately, this creates a sort of academic apartheid in the nation’s education system. For instance, basing on affordability, children of the poor go to low or average performing schools while those from rich backgrounds go to the best performing schools.
Most disturbing is that all this is happening against a backdrop of a stern warning by the Ministry of Education to schools against doing so. “Government appreciates the prevailing economic situation, which results in a number of requests to increase fees. Schools should not hike these fees inconsiderably because we want all children to access education,” Dr John Chrysostom Muyingo, the State Minister for Higher Education, said last year.

The problem of high fees and a long list of items some schools impose on parents begs answers to the following questions: First, what is the objective of setting up a school – private or otherwise? Second, why is government giving only lip-service and not taking action against defiant school administrators?
Instead, what we witness today are government officials closing schools they say lack minimum standards. But why can’t they also take drastic actions against school administrators who defy warnings against raising fees and imposing material demands on parents?

It is important for the government to know that the critical issue parents are grappling with today is not so much which school to close or not. Their biggest challenge is how to afford fees and the countless materials the so-called schools with requisite standards demand.