The High Cost of Delay: Why Uganda Must Provide Free Public Funded Pre-Primary Education NOW
The Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER) in Uganda, a PEHRC member, has produced a new video highlighting the long lasting consequences for children who miss out on pre-primary education and calling for change.
Video by the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights on the necessity of introducing free, public pre-primary education in Uganda.
The context in Uganda
According to the Ugandan Education Act 2008, private organisations or individuals are responsible for providing pre-primary education and parents and guardians must pay for this education. However, parents often are unable to pay the fees for private pre-primary education. As a result, many children miss out on vital learning.
ISER calls for action
Angella Kasule Nabwowe, Executive Director, Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER), explains the necessity of change now and how it can be achieved:
“The evidence about the negative impact of lack of public funded pre-primary, or what many people call nursery, education is overwhelming for government to maintain the status quo.
As ISER, we have done research with Human Rights Watch where we have demonstrated that the fees charged by schools is unaffordable for many Ugandan families, especially the ones in rural areas, which means that many children are missing out on foundation learning and we are seeing the lifelong consequences that they are facing. When children start late, they repeat classes, and when they repeat, they lose interest. When they lose interest, they eventually drop out. When they drop out, they go into child labour, child marriages, teenage pregnancies, and when you compound all that, what does it do to our human capital development as a country? Even the report of the Education Policy Review Commission, which was published this year, shows that Uganda is lagging behind Kenya and Tanzania, where already pre-primary or nursery is compulsory and free. So, we need to do something urgently.
One, the government can start by providing for one year of free pre-primary at schools implementing Universal Primary Education and then progressively we can get to the three years. But also we need to go back to the Education Act and do an amendment such that the financing of pre-primary is not left to parents.”
Vital research on privatisation in pre-primary education in Uganda
Report by Human Rights Watch and the Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (ISER) produced in 2024 : “Lay a Strong Foundation for All Children”: Fees as a Discriminatory Barrier to Pre-Primary Education in Uganda
Blog by Angella Kasule Nabwowe, Initiative for Social and Economic Rights, and Jo Becker, Human Rights Watch: Building Uganda’s Prosperity Through Free Pre-Primary Education
Views expressed in this blog are those of the author/s’ alone. Publication on this blog does not represent an endorsement by PEHRC of the opinions expressed.