John Chrysestom Muyingo, the State Minister for Education
The Ministry of Education and Sports has rejected a proposal by some lawmakers to consider having parents of students in government aided schools to post all fees in the consolidated fund managed by Bank of Uganda so as to rein over the exorbitant fees charged by schools.
The Ministry’s position was communicated by Ketty Lamaro, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education while appearing before Parliament’s Education Committee where the Ministry had been summoned to respond to concerns raised in the motion by MPs on the exorbitant fees charged by schools.
Among the prayers raised in the motion was the consideration by the Ministry of Education to have government aided schools pay tuition and non-tuition fees into the consolidated fund.
However, Lamaro warned against the proposal saying it will hamper daily operations of the schools and these should be left to spend funds at source.
“On our side, we really don’t advise funds going (to the consolidated fund) because of the challenges involved. All schools being on the IFMS system, there are logistical issues there, these schools require money to run on daily basis, you know the challenges of funds going to the consolidated fund, sometimes funds are released late or sometimes funds aren’t released at all. Schools need to have money to run and on our side we think it would be best to allow schools to spend at source,” said Lamaro.
Professor Samuel Luboga Abimelech, Chairperson Education Service Commission blamed the school fees increment on the limited funding provided by Government to public schools, citing an example of Mengo Senior School that has over 5300 students, yet Government is paying wages for 74 teachers and the School Board is paying wages for the other 124 extra teachers.
“The schools that only receive wage support can treat that as having permission to raise funds through fees for the remaining charges like paying wages of teachers,” he said.
The State Minister for Education, John Chrysestom Muyingo acknowledged that the low staffing levels in government aided schools have largely contributed to exorbitant fees, and revealed plans by Government to partner with World Bank to improve on the staffing levels in a phased manner, but priority will be given to schools whose staffing levels are less than 50% or have less than 19 teachers on the payroll.
In 2021/2022 budget, Shs22.925Bn was set aside to recruit 1,797 staff of these, 508 were arts teachers while 1,289 were science teachers for secondary schools.
For the primary schools, Shs24.094Bn was provided for the recruitment of at least 4,919 primary teachers and an additional Shs4.3Bn was provided for the recruitment of 448 school inspectors, however some local governments failed to recruit the teachers on time, prompting the return of funds to the consolidated fund at the end of the financial year.
In 2022/2023, the Minister revealed that Shs13Bn had been provided for the recruitment of 2,654 primary teachers ins selected local governments giving priority to schools that are terribly understaffed.
