ANALYSIS: School fees crunch

One of the points in its petition is: “Schools must be accountable; the breakdown of the fees structure is problematic. Non-tuition charges like development fees and entrance fees among others need to be justified.”

Unfortunately, it is not clear how the government can intervene, especially in the affairs of private schools.  Commissioner Kule told The Independent that, in his view, even government-aided schools cannot have uniform fees.

Under the news fees structures, most top secondary schools now charge about Shs2 million per three months term for continuing students minus `school requirements’. New students pay a lot more as they must pay for more school requirements.

Fees in top primary schools are no different from secondary. At Budo Junior School, for example, school fees are Shs1.7 million. Shs998, 500 is listed for school fees, Development and Maintenance takes up Shs400, 000. The other items are school uniform, day wear, games kit, sweater, stocking, (mattress, mattress cover, basin and bucket) and the cost of labelling which all amount to Shs523, 000.

The amounts keep reducing from top schools, to mid-level schools in urban areas, then to schools in rural areas which pay the least fees. However, fees have gone up in almost all schools. The cheapest schools now pay about Shs200,000 per pupil per term in the remotest rural school.

In Uganda, according to the latest Uganda Bureau of Statics Report on the 2014 household census, each woman on average has six children. If all of them are in top schools, it means the family must find Shs12 million per three months term or Shs36 million per year on average.

In the past, when parents faced such high fees, they had the option of going to cheaper UPE/USE schools. But it appears that has also ended.

Although government school under USE/UPE cannot hike their fees dramatically, they appear to have devised ways to beat the regulation. Instead of hiking school fees, the filled the `school requirement list’ with suffocating demands.

Many schools now have entrance fees, development and maintenance fees, insurance fees, projects fees, generator fees, property insurance fees, Board of governors fees, infrastructure fees, and school uniform fees.

Many have feeding fees, pastoral fees for church or mosque, and Parents Teachers Association (PTA) fees. Then they sell day wear, sweaters, and stockings separate from uniform.

Students must also report with reams of paper, specified text books, detergent, and cans of paint, toilet paper, and brooms.

“The way the items are broken down speaks to a sinister plot to fleece Ugandans,” said one parent, “This is fraud.”

However, the school administrators are eager to explain the new myriad fees.

Everest Kayondo, a member of the Board of Governors at St Henry’s College Kitovu explained the different categories of the fees structure.

“For the school fees insurance, once you have been recruited into the college in S1, you join the scheme. If you lose your parent, the school will make sure you study until you finish your six years. You only miss out when you are dismissed due to indiscipline,” Kayondo said.

According to him, the Kitovu insurance program has been going on for many years and is quite successful.

Kayondo told The Independent that another project unique to Kitovu, the Centenary Fund Project was an incentive to the PTA. He was not well versed with the other items though.

Gayaza High School, another prominent government aided school had fees for Senior One students at Shs1.7m and charging Shs365000 for entrance. On the same fees circular, Shs229, 535 was for PTA, Shs598, 030 for Board of Governor’s fees and Shs290, 653 for Development fees. For Gayaza, the Board of Governors fees were much more than both PTA and Development fees.

A parent whose daughter was at the school for six years was not impressed. She says even when parents meet as PTA at the school to discuss the breakdown of the fees, the structure never makes sense. She says she is not surprised that the entrance fees now are so high.

“At some point, we realised that a lot of money would end up as allowances for board members. The biggest complaint was about infrastructure on which we would never see an improvement despite there always being development fees. We would never get clarity from the headmistress. It was so confusing.”

The headmistress of Gayaza High School Victoria Kisarale could not be reached for a comment despite several attempts.

A parent whose son is in S4 at St Mary’s School College Kisubi told The Independent that in many meetings of Parents Teachers Association (PTA), the parents are caught off guard by the proposals presented to them.

“In these meetings they usually cite the increasing cost of food and things like electricity and they tell us we are going to increase on this and that,” he said. He explained that the PTA meetings are usually quick one day affairs that follow smaller meetings of the PTA executives that decide the fees.

“One parent would not want to be seen as standing up to oppose the entire system, so the fees increments get hammered through,” the parent said.

The parent who did not want to be named says it is possible the fees in other government schools have been hiked to these levels because of this PTA system.

“There is a time the school wanted to buy a school bus and they put it to the parents where each student had to pay Shs500, 000,” he said.  He said they smartly spread it out across three terms “making it seem normal” yet it is a substantial fee.

The parent says he paid Shs1.48 million this term compared to Shs1.3m for third term last year due to registration fees for S4 students.