I recently watched a video clip on social media titled “school requirements are my property” in which comedian Herbert Mendo Ssegujja, better known by his stage name Teacher Mpamire received school requirements from parents and pupils at the beginning of the term.
Someone may think that it’s just comedy, but I reflected upon it and realized how schools are taking advantage of parents, charging us a lot of what I can call ‘unnecessary’ items.
The most interesting part of Teacher Mpamire’s video was when a parent wrote a child’s name of a rim of paper and the “teacher/director” shockingly asked “why did you do that?”
These days, schools require a lot of scholastic materials ranging from brooms, toilet papers, rims of papers, among others, to expensive uniforms and high school fees.
Some schools in urban centres charge school fees ranging from one million to 3 million shillings. The school fees paid by a kindergarten/primary pupil is higher than the tuition of a course at the university. I have heard of schools which sell the items they get from parents every term.
The education sector has become very competitive to the extent that parents are already borrowing bank loans and obtaining money from money lenders to meet school fees for a child still at primary level. I have seen low income earners in my village and in town doing this, and I don’t know if the investment in a child’s education will bring the expected returns in our current Uganda where the rate of youth unemployment is also high. I have also seen many parents endow a lot in education and fail to take their children to the university because they already spent a lot at primary and secondary levels.
The liberalisation of education sector since 1993 has seen many private schools coming up. Some of these schools still face the challenges of substandard or poor infrastructure, unqualified teachers, poor sanitation, high tax charges from government, poor grades, and many more. To parents, all these challenges have a direct impact on our children. The fees charged from learners does not correspondent with what children receive from the schools. Therefore, much as we spend a lot, some schools are not able to offer the expected grades and this is becomes a “waste” of resources.
According to the Ministry of Education and Sports website, in the secondary sub-sector, the number of private schools is about 4000, more than double the number of government-funded schools. The number of private primary schools is more than 8,000 doubling that of secondary ones. This shows that private institutions are growing at a faster rate. The challenge may remain on how the government is willing to regulate private schools from overcharging parents.
The government also needs to improve on the quality of education in public schools especially UPE and USE ones. There is something the government is not doing right in service delivery among her schools that propel parents to resort to private ones. For example, the ratio of teacher-pupils in public schools is around 1:200 compared to private ones of 1:50. The underfunding and understaffing in public schools is alarming. This cripples down the quality of education in public schools.
Nonetheless, I would like to advise parents to be realistic with their incomes and think about the sustainable ways of keeping children in good schools from kindergarten to university level. The commercialization of education has even killed the skills of creativity and critical thinking among learners. Children are pumped with a lot of academic stuff at the expense of other soft and vocational skills.
Good grades speak louder than the holistic child development. If a child doesn’t get first or second grade, though he/she acquired other skills or developed talents like in music, sports and games, this may be rated as a failure. Children as early as P.3 are required to do coaching during holidays. At P.4, boarding at school is compulsory and the child has no time for social and spiritual interactions.
No wonder, the moral decay rate among the digital generation is increasing with high cases of murder and kidnaps done majorly by young people between 19-30 years old. This generation has seen the increase in the cultural perversion, consequently resulting into cross-generational and transactional sexual relations in Uganda than never before, among others.
Let us not allow private schools to exploit us at the expense of meagre earnings we toil for daily, spending sleepless nights working, abandoning the parenting responsibility to nannies, becoming absent parents. We do this thinking we are investing for children rather than investing in them.
Take children in schools you can afford and live within your means. Don’t force a child at 7 years old into boarding at school. Avoid competition with others, remain in your lane. Utilize school holidays to pass on other skills.
The writer is a child advocate and a parenting coach.
tumudickson@gmail.com
