Like many children in Uganda, Bridget Nabawanuka was excited about seeing her friends again after the world’s longest pandemic school closure, but a steep hike in fees meant she never made it back to the classroom.
The seven-year old, who now works at her mother’s food stall in the capital, Kampala, is among a rising number of children who are dropping out because cash-strapped parents are unable to pay soaring bills from state and private schools.
“She asks me every morning when she will go back to school,” said Bridget’s mother, Agnes Nangabi, who hopes to save enough to send her daughter to a different state school with lower fees.
Primary and secondary school education is meant to be free in the East African nation, but most government schools say they do not receive enough state funding to cover running costs, in turn charging for everything from exam fees to toilet paper.
Many head teachers have ignored an Education Ministry plea not to hike fees above pre-pandemic levels, said two human rights lawyers who have filed suit against the government to demand it regulate fees — something it promised to do in 2018.
“Very many children have and are dropping out, both as a result of the decimation of incomes … and as a knock-on effect of the fee hikes,” said one of the lawyers, Andrew Karamagi, describing the situation as an “unregulated privatisation”.
Asked to comment on the lawsuit, which is due back in court on April 25, the Education Ministry said it was finalising regulations about the charging of fees that would include penalties for schools flouting the rules.
The ministry does not oppose schools charging fees but they must make a formal application to increase them, said spokesperson Mugimba Dennis.
Government schools typically charge about 200,000 shillings ($56) per term, while private school fees can range from 500,000 to 1 million shillings.
Nangabi, who has two other children and is the family’s sole breadwinner, earns 15,000 to 30,000 shillings a day, and could not afford the 170,000-shilling fee for Bridget’s school — up 20% since before the pandemic.
Karamagi said the “extortionist” school fees would have an unequal impact on the poorest families. “Education, which should be an equaliser, has become a separator (or) stratifier of society,” he said.