By Leonard Kamugisha Akida,
NATIONAL
The government has been advised to renew the public private partnership (PPP) with private schools to enable primary leavers who are not admitted to government schools attain Universal Secondary Education in private schools.
The demands follow a recent pause on selection of Senior One students in Kampala which left out over 130,000 candidates unadmitted out of 648,662 eligible candidates to join secondary education.
In 2007, government introduced PPP in schools to enable students who passed at primary level study in about 800 private schools implementing USE. The program was however abolished ten years later (in 2018) after president Museveni realized that a lot of government funds were being squandered in supporting private school.
“Alot of government money is squandered in supporting private schools under USE. What a waste all these years,” December 24, 2013 in a letter to the them minister of education Jesca Alupo.
“The best way is not supporting new admissions in Senior One next year until the 4yrs when this donation to private schools stops completely,” he directed.
According to the president, abolishing the partnership would see the money supporting private schools being used to construct at least one government seed school in each sub-county, a process which government has since started implementing.
Faizo Muzeyi, the head of media and communications at UPC observes that renewing the partnership will allow stranded candidates attain affordable education. He also suggested technical Vocational education and training (TVET) as an alternative to learners who cannot obtain secondary education.
“UPC calls upon Government to renew her partnership with potential private schools as it is the case with universities to absorb the stranded candidates as well as promoting technical, vocational education and training institutions as options for our primary seven leavers to undertake a wider range of vocational skilful courses such as welding and metal fabrication, plumbing, textile, carpentry, motor vehicle mechanics, brick laying and agriculture among others,” Faizo explained.
In addition, the government has been urged to address challenges facing USE schools such as understaffing, underfunding and insufficient infrastructure to accommodate a big number of students.
“UPE and USE is a good under-taking. However, their funding should be given a top priority in order to mitigate and absorb the highly increasing number of students. It is always better to plan for optimum facilities so as to ensure their maximum utilisation as opposed to under planning and get caught up at the tail end of the cycle like the situation at hand,” UPC advised.
