Govt moots plan for charges under UPE

Students wash hands after break time at Kisubi Mapeera Senior Secondary School in Entebbe on October 12, 2020. PHOTO / DAVID LUBOWA

The government has commenced studies to establish if Ugandans would be willing to pay in support of universal free education schooling and, if so, how much and in what form.

News about the research comes in the wake of rising petitions by particularly private schools to the Education ministry Permanent Secretary, Ms Ketty Lamaro, to allow them to increase tuition in the wake of rising cost of living.

Mr Dennis Mugimba, the ministry spokesman, yesterday said findings of the research, whose primary data is being analysed, will inform the development of a regulatory and financing mechanism to guide interventions under free education.

Consultations with stakeholders about the proposals will be undertaken during the second term, which starts on May 9.

The Ministry of Education, Mr Mugimba said, commissioned the country-wide study to collect empirical evidence on payment of fees and other charges in schools, implementing Universal Primary Education (UPE) and Universal Secondary Education (USE).

He told a media conference at the Uganda Media Centre in Kampala that the study will help the government establish a streamlined regulatory and financial framework for school charges and fees.

The study will assess a number of issues, among them, the level of parents and caregivers’ willingness to pay for primary and secondary schooling.

Mr Mugimba noted that if majority parents and benefactors accept to contribute, then the government will guide them of chargeable rates and manner of contribution.

Children of those unable to afford any levies will be taken care of by the government, he said.

“We will have to take that thinking for the Executive to decide those who are willing to pay and what they want to pay. But remember we still have people who are still very poor in our midst who cannot afford. Whichever option we come up with, we have to take care of those who are not able to pay, meanwhile providing for those who want to pay what they want to pay,” Mr Mugimba said.

He revealed that while on campaign trail for the 2021 elections, President Museveni was informed that some parents were economically able, but pretending that they cannot finance the education of their children. The government commissioned a study last month in order to establish the truth.

The researchers interviewed respondents in 6,000 households of 46 districts and covered 350 schools countrywide during the study funded by the Norwegian Embassy in Uganda.

In addition to assessing parents and care-givers willingness to make monetary contributions, the study seeks to provide answers to the nature and extent of fees and other school charges in USE and UPE-implementing schools.

It explores what charges would be applicable, how they can be better collected, utilised, and accounted for.

Government also intends to capture how vulnerable groups such as children with disabilities, the refugees and those in areas that practice negative cultural practices such as female genital mutilation, are impacted by school fees and other charges.

During yesterday’s press briefing, Mr Mugimba noted that the primary research will also establish the most feasible financing framework for UPE and USE.

President Museveni’s government introduced Universal Primary Education or UPE, under which at inception the State was to provide free education to four children per family, in 1997 primarily to increase access to education by children from poor families.

The policy shift increased school enrolment by about four-fold, adding to rising global education access as more states moved to provide free education.

By 2015, the United Nations reported that that net primary school enrolment had increased to 91 percent and the number of out-of-school children reduced by nearly a-half, thanks to the 2000 Millennium Development Goals that endorsed universal primary education.

In later years, families enlisted children on the programme without caps, and the government formalised the practice through a 2003 policy review.

However, concerns about high drop-out, attributed in part to parents’ inability to pay more expensively at secondary schools and technical institutions, forced the government a decade later to introduce Universal Secondary Education (USE) policy.

Under the free education programmes, parents and guardians were, among others, tasked to provide uniforms, meals, exercise books, local materials for building, and physical labour.

However, the free education programmes have been dogged by concerns over the quality of learning, where independent studies by entities such as Twaweza show that Primary Six pupils can hardly read work for lower classes, heads of institutions charging fees that parents argue they cannot afford.

Parents have repeatedly asked the government to fund all of the educational needs, and head teachers have demanded increased capitation grant to schools to cover the gap of parents’ contribution, but Mr Mugimba yesterday ruled out the latter option.

He argued that the current amount is adequate since government caters for most of the expences for scholastic materials, operational costs and teacher salaries and other emergencies.

The annual capitation grant per UPE pupil is Shs20,000, or Shs6,600 per child per term lasting three months. In specific terms, this translates to the government spending Shs333 per UPE pupil since classes run only on weekdays, which in a term add roughly to 60.

Under USE, the state pays Shs56,000 and Shs90,000 per each O-Level and A-Level student, respectively.

Officials say capitation grant is to enable educational institutions procure instructional materials such as chalk and stationery that are not supplied by the government.

Mr Mugimba yesterday disclosed that they each year spend Shs10 billion to buy instructional materials for UPE schools.