By John Masaba
Former vice president Specioza Wandira Kazibwe has made a case for the strengthening of public schools.
Kazibwe says this is one of the ways to provide reliable education to the citizenry across all income levels.
“Make sure our public education system works. It has produced the likes of me from the village of Budwege (in Iganga district in Eastern Uganda). Through the public schools, here I am. So let us not privatise education to the detriment of the future of our country,” she said.
She was speaking during the book launch of former Chief Justice Bart Magunda Katureebe in Kampala on Thursday.
“The world has changed; it is brains that fight each other. We need more Katureebes, which means let’s make the education the way it was. Through the village of Budwege through the public good (of public schools), here I am.”
Kazibwe, who rose through the ranks to assume the office of vice president in the 1990s, holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in medicine from Makerere University as well as a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University in the US.
Her call comes at the time when there are reports of the high cost of education due to the heavy commercialisation of education, which experts say is locking out the poor.
In a bid to address the problem, government recently moved to put a cap on fees in private schools.
For instance, a school owner who levies fees above the prescribed cap commits an offence and is liable, on conviction, to a fine not exceeding 50 currency points (sh1m) or a term of imprisonment not exceeding 12 months or both.
The fees cap for all schools, other than government grant-aided is as follows; pre-primary: sh690,000; primary: sh570,000 (day); and sh1,220,000 (boarding), secondary and vocational institutions, sh960,000 (day) and sh1,610, 000 (boarding). Furthermore, the education ministry has not regulated international schools that charge up to sh25m per semester.
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