Joseph Byaruhanga, earns Shs300,000 per month as a security guard. He has a family of three children to cater for, as well as paying other bills. His first two children attend a nearby private primary school in Namasuba, Zanna where he pays fees of Shs170,000 for each child totaling to Shs340,000 a term.

Apart from tuition, he has to buy scholastic materials and other fees as directed by the school. Byaruhanga is not your rich parent but he sure is among the growing list of parents who year by year join the private schools trend as the best way to educate their children. 

“The problem with universal primary education schools is that the population in class is too high. It is possible to find more than 200 pupils in one class. Private schools have a small teacher to pupil ratio. You will find 50 pupils in a class which is manageable. A child in a class of many pupils will not learn anything and might take long to understand,” Byaruhanga says.

In 1997, government introduced Universal Primary Education. Under this arrangement, four children in every family were to study free of charge in all government-aided primary schools. Almost 10 years after UPE, the government introduced Universal Secondary Education becoming the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to introduce universal secondary education. But despite this, parents are increasingly parting with huge sums of money to educate their children in private schools. As such numbers of private schools increase each year.

According to the Uganda Schools Guide website, as of today there are more than 13,000 private schools in 127 districts in Uganda. Among the private schools are the high end ones that offer foreign curriculums and target wealthy parents and the ones that target middle income earners.

The endless challenges plaguing most public schools have increasingly eroded public confidence. They have been labelled as for the ‘poor’ forcing some parents to take children to private schools where they hope to find better education for their children.

The increase in enrollment of students has not only accelerated a rise in private schools across the country; but also the cost of education.

Overwhelming numbers

In January 2018, Alex Kakooza, the permanent secretary of Ministry of Education and Sports while at the Senior One selection exercise at Uganda Manufacturers Association grounds announced that government had scrapped Universal Secondary Education in private schools under the Public Private Partnership (PPP).