Government must move to regulate schools

The curtain has been brought down on the second term of the primary and secondary school calendar.

Most schools have hiked school fees, some by as much as Shs200,000 even when the government announced in Parliament on August 31, 2023, that schools would no longer be allowed to make fees increments without written clearance from the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education and Sports, the Chief Administrative Officers or the Town Clerks.

The unending increments have placed a great burden on most parents. Matters are not helped that some schools have turned other schools’ activities such as field trips into money-making ventures.

While issuing the statement last August, Mr Peter Ogwang, the State minister for Sports, also announced that schools would no longer be allowed to demand for other cash and non-cash requirements outside the approved school fees structure. Those measures, it would appear, have since been ignored by the schools, which have gone on to make more cash and non-cash demands.

One school asked parents of its Senior Four class to pay Shs400,000 for a study tour of western Uganda. The same parents were also required to provide Shs100,000 for each child’s upkeep. Each child was also told to get additional clothes for the said trip. The children were sent back home to collect the said money and clothes a week before the end of term.

This smacked of insensitivity of the highest order. The proprietors of the school seem to be living in dreamland. Someone needs to wake them up to the economic realities of our times.

The problem though is that the government has been missing in all this. Whereas we are cognisant of the fact that Uganda is a free market economy, it is not proper that the citizenry is left at the mercy of unscrupulous school owners and administrators.

It is incumbent upon the government to operate as an umpire that adjudicates the rules by which the different non-state actors operate. 

There has to be some regulation, but the government has either been away without official leave or chosen to look the other way. This has fuelled impunity on the part of school owners and administrators.

The government needs to return. It must wake up its officers in the ministries of Education and Local Governments to enforce the regulations. 

It must also move to strengthen the supervisory arms of the education sector. School inspectors must be equipped, facilitated and motivated to do their work.