Africa-Press – Uganda. Parliament has approved Shs309.162b for the Ministry of Education and Sports to implement Universal Primary Education (UPE) or free primary education.
A total of Shs8.5b of the funds will go into improving district level capitation or monitoring and inspection.
Another Shs73.2b will be used to buy instructional materials for all schools while Shs100.9b will cater for school-based capitation costs.
An additional Shs690m will support special needs education, whereas Shs65.7b will cater for school welfare grant, including feeding subsidy for teaching and non-teaching staff and housing subsidy for the teaching staff.
An extra ShsShs60.1b grant will cater for the annual continuous professional development for all teachers.
Mr Dennis Mugimba, the Education ministry spokesperson, yesterday said the Cabinet approved the funds in March last year. He said Cabinet approved an additional Shs1.48 trillion in September last year to fix some of the UPE programme gaps.
“Our aim is to ensure UPE is completely free whereby parents are not charged extra costs on the items,’’ he said.
Dr Mugimba said the funds would focus on the UPE programme in the next financial year whereas the Universal Secondary Education (USE) programme will be catered for in the Financial Year 2026/2027.
However, Dr Mugimba, who stressed that there are no standard fees for each school, said the sharing of the funds would depend on the number of pupils, teachers, and the needs of the school in each district.
The Education ministry records, as of September 2023, show that the country has 12,433 UPE schools, 136,819 teachers, and 8,624,264 pupils. But these numbers are expected to grow in the next financial year.
Currently, the government provides Shs20,000 capitation grant per pupil per annum under the UPE programme.
The capitation grant expenditure guidelines provides that 50 percent of the grant is spent on instructional materials, 30 percent on co-curricular activities, 15 percent on school maintenance, and utilities such as water and power, and five percent expended on school administration.
Mr Hussein Mitala, the chairperson of Kamuli Primary Schools Head teachers’ Association, commended the government for the funds. He said support would improve the learner-teacher ratio as well as build capacity among teachers.
However, Mr Mitala said the provision of free primary education would only work if parents change their mindset on education.
“The parents should have some contribution towards their child’s education. For instance, the little money a child contributes for a meal at school draws the attention of a parent and he or she starts putting in effort to send the child to school,’’ Mr Mitala said.
Mr Filbert Baguma, the secretary general of the Uganda National Teachers Union, asked the government to increase the capitation grant from the current Shs20, 000 to at least a minimum of Shs60,000.
“Free education will attract more learners; meaning we shall need more classrooms, more teachers, and more desks. Above all, the teachers’ welfare has to be improved, otherwise, if you leave the teacher’s factor behind, you will be wasting time,’’ he added.
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