Parliament’s Education Committee has rejected a proposal by some lawmakers to have school fees payable to all public schools paid directly to the Consolidated Fund, where the schools would have to pick the funds.
The Committee says this would cripple the running of schools because of the bureaucracy involved in obtaining money from the Fund is unprecedented.
While presenting the report on the motion a for a resolution of Parliament urging Government to address the exorbitant Tuition and Non-Tuition fees charged by government grant-aided schools, Cuthbert Abigaba (Kibale County) cited Section 29 (2) of the Public Finance Management Act, 2015 (Amended), that states that revenue collected or received by a vote, state Enterprise or public corporation shall be paid into and shall form part of the consolidated fund.
He argued that for this provision to be enforced, it would require Government to allocate a vote to all grant aided schools to deposit school fees collections into the Consolidated fund would subject schools through rigorous government procedures at the time of requisitioning for funds to implement their activities.
“The Committee observes that Government grant-aided schools do not fall within the scope of Section 29(2) of the Public Finance Management Ac42015 and are not obligated by low to deposit their fees collections into the Cons Fund. The Committee recommends to this House that this prayer should be dropped,” said Abigaba.
However, Sarah Opendi (DWR Tororo) spurred with the recommendation of the Committee to have her prayer rejected arguing, “ It is high time this parliament stood with the people of Uganda and we left these schools to the foundational bodies or we amend the law so that all these bodies paid into the consolidated fund and then there is equity in education in this country,” she said.
It should be recalled that in August 2022, the Ministry of Education and Sports, rejected the similar proposal warning that it would hamper daily operations of the schools because of the challenges involved especially having all schools on the IFMS system, would expose them to logistical challenges of late releases and thus hamper daily operations in schools.
Deputy Speaker Tayebwa asked the Committee to go back and reconsider the motion after many MPs rejected the proposal in the Committee report.
