Higher school costs, on top of rising poverty and child marriage are now hindering low-income families from taking their children back to school in Uganda.
Many children, whose dreams of education have been shattered by the unaffordability of education just after the world’s longest lockdown, have now resorted to working menial jobs, because they probably won’t have access to a classroom again.
Primary and secondary education is meant to be free to Ugandan students, but most government schools claim they don’t receive enough state funding to cover running costs, hence the need to charge students for everything.
The Ministry of Education recently implored head teachers not to hike school fees above pre-pandemic levels, but the plea has since fallen on deaf ears.
Consequently, two lawyers have filed suit against the government to demand it regulate fees as it promised in 2018.
“Very many children have and are dropping out, both as a result of the decimation of incomes … and as a knock-on effect of the fee hikes,” said one of the lawyers, Andrew Karamagi, describing the situation as an “unregulated privatization”.
The Ministry of Education, in response to the lawsuit, said it was finalizing regulations about the charging of school fees that would include penalties for schools that broke the rules.
“The ministry does not oppose schools charging fees but they must make a formal application to increase them,’’ said spokesperson Mugimba Dennis.
Government schools typically charge about 200,000 shillings ($56) per term, while private school fees can range from 500,000 to 1 million shillings.
According to Karamagi, the “extortionist’’ school fees would have an unequal impact on the poorest families, especially those which depend on female household heads that are the sole bread winners.
“Education, which should be an equaliser, has become a separator (or) stratifier of society,” he said.
In a country where many potentially capable students have given up all hopes of going back to school, economists have raised fears that the education crisis could leave countries like Uganda without the skilled workforce they need for their future development.