President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has threatened tough action against a section of government officials whom he blames for sabotaging the government’s free education programs.

While commissioning the Presidential Industrial Skilling Hub for Greater Masaka on Wednesday, May 24th, 2023, Museveni said the free education program was to ensure children of the poor access formal education, but unfortunately, this has been frustrated by some government officials.

“I informed the guests that we started free education for the poor a long time ago. The challenge we have is the sabotage by unbothered government officials who extort money from children in government schools,” said the President.

According to the president, these hubs show people that it’s possible for the government to support children from poor households to study, get employed, and sustain themselves.

“Our goal is affordable education. I urge Ugandans to support NRM’s free education policy, which we started in 1996,” he said.

President Museveni is currently touring the region to popularize wealth creation through commercial farming.

In 2021, Members of Parliament recommended urgent review of the government’s free education system, owing to declining education standards.

“Since the introduction of the Universal Primary and Secondary Education programmes, it has been widely reported that the huge increase in enrollment has exerted enormous pressure on the existing school systems and facilities including classrooms, teachers, textbooks and scholastic materials hence affecting the quality of education,” reads the report in part.

“There is need for comprehensive, periodic and participatory review of policy formulation procedures, increased and timely disbursement of capitation grants, increased civic engagement, participation and responsibility in critical areas such as school feeding, operation and maintenance of schools facilities, the MPs notes.

UPE was introduced in 1997 to benefit four children per family. Since its introduction, according to the Ministry of Education statistics, enrollment has increased from 5.3 million pupils to about 8.5 million today.

USE was introduced in 2007. To date, about 1.2 million students have been enrolled under the programme in some 1,471 schools across the country.

In 2020, the government used more than Shs30 billion to finance the USE programme. The education sector funding, like in previous years, has increased from Shs899 billion to over Shs1 trillion to date.

In its recent report, the World Bank noted that despite their support to Uganda over the past decade, as of 2005, the average number of students per classroom was still 94, and three students were sharing a single textbook.