Cost of education and the ridiculousness of nursery school graduation parties
What you need to know:
What a waste of family resources for a family in its infancy to spend lavishly on a nursery graduation as if there is any achievement substantially worth celebrating
The Uganda Revenue Authority should begin considering taxing nursery graduation functions as a way of raising revenue and deterring parents from engaging in lavish but empty celebrations.
Many times I get invitations to attend or fundraise for items like nursery graduations functions or even for bachelors’ degrees, which I have willingly succumbed to in the spirit of good neighbourliness, even when I was pretty aware that it was a stupid idea. The most recent party I attended which was modest cost Shs3.8 million .
What a waste of family resources for a family in its infancy to spend lavishly on a nursery graduation as if there is any achievement substantially worth celebrating! While I do not have any quarrel with the rich who should spend their money allegedly because they worked hard, I have issues with peasants who have jumped on the bandwagon.
The much hyped Parish Development Model, for example, gives out one million shillings for the poverty alleviation drive and I have seen the happiness it has caused especially in rural areas.
The cost of the recent nursery graduation party I attended is money for almost four PDM beneficiaries, and yet one of my ‘neighbours’ at the same party who coincidentally had held one such party a week earlier, was complaining of a harsh economic environment the NRM government had plunged the country into, as I painfully listened to the paradox.
How come such practices are rare in the developed world where money is not a problem? How come some universities do not even conduct graduation ceremonies and only send one’s graduation certificate to the address provided?
It is my plea that it is high time, the Kabaka of Buganda, the Kyabazinga of Busoga, other cultural leaders, religious institutions, the Wavamunos, Sudhirs and the Mukwanos among others came out to sensitise the general public on expenditure patterns so that we do not occasion another poverty brand onto ourselves that is self driven.
Covid-19 taught us that many of our urban dwellers were only pretentious given the loud cries over food that we witnessed during the lockdown.
A simple calculation for parents who have not yet taken kids to school should teach them why they should be frugal. It takes 48 terms from nursery to the end of senior six which costs about Shs48 million in modest urban schools, and another six semesters at university costing not less than Shs18 million, meaning the parent pays about Shs66 million per child.
Yet from our statistics, we have an average of five kids per household which by simple arithmetic is almost Shs330 million spent on a bachelor’s degree.
The net effect of this is parents whose lives are plunged into poverty, sickness, and domestic violence having sold all valuable items including land for children’s education, many of whom remain unemployed.
While the other stakeholders should sensitize the public on prudent spending, the government should do all it takes to lower the cost of education as a matter of priority and it is a matter where our voters want to gauge their MPs on effective representation.
Mweru Samuel Byachi
