In the backdrop of Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) hiking national exams fees, parents are protesting against the move in a number of schools, the ministry of education headed by First Lady Janet Museveni is reportedly set to direct schools to discuss any such hike with parents beforehand.
UNEB this week (April 4) sent circulars to all schools, informing them PLE (Primary) candidates have been increased by 41.6% to sh34,000 from sh24,000, UCE (O level) by 33.3% from sh123,000 to sh164,000 and the UACE (Senior 6) hiked by 43.1% from sh130,000 to sh180,000.
This is the third time UNEB is increasing these fees over the past five years.
Som teachers in rural areas insist the latest hike is ill-timed unfiar and irregular because it has come just weeks to the end of the term when most schools have already collected the old fees besides the hard times when schools ar struggling to make ends meet due to increased food prices.
Uneb general secretary Dan Odong said they should have communicated this earlier but waited for the ministry to approve after they submitted the new changes to the minister. “Uneb’s main resources come from registration fees and if we are carrying out the real unit cost of conducting the exams, that money must be met by the parents,” Mr Odong said. “All candidates should be registered electronically.”
He added that the current fees paid by candidates is not enough for setting, marking and processing the examinations which has left the board in a financial crisis to the extent of delaying the release of the examinations. “We cannot always wait for government to release funds for us to operate, if this had been done properly, we would not have had all these delays in releasing the exams because money would have come at registration of candidates,” Mr Odong added.
But parents in UPE and USE schools (state-sponsored) are being exploited by headteachers who are forcing them to pay the money yet those schools are exempted from paying exam fees. Similarly, in some private schools, authorities have been asking for more money than the fees set by UNEB. Exploited parents say some schools are of late arguing that they need more money to carry out e-registration because they don’t have reliable internet or even computers.
Education ministry’s undersecretary, Aggrey Kibenge, said such schools are illegally asking for the additional fees and should stop henceforth.
“That is wrong, we intend to follow up the matters during inspection of schools.” he warned.
Parents say the new UNEB rates are an inconvenience. “We did not plan to spend an extra money on registration fees, this has come as a shock,” said Paul Mugisha who has a child at Buganda Road Primary School.
