Uganda declared October 5 a national public holiday in honor of World Teacher’s Day, as proclaimed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1994.

So as Uganda joins the rest of the world to celebrate Teachers Day under the theme ‘Valuing Teacher Voices Towards a New Social Contract for Education, there’s a big controversy with what teachers are currently undergoing.

An accurate interpretation of the above theme underscores the urgency of engaging with teachers to address the challenges they face, including salary disparities, poor payments, poor working conditions, and poor infrastructure, such as roads and building structures in schools, among others.

However, since time immemorial, there has been a challenge of salary disparity between science and arts teachers, mostly in government secondary schools, something that has caused trauma to the neglected arts teachers.

Being stuck in historical bias, favoring science teachers at the expense of art teachers, the gap has persisted regardless of the various interventions by the teacher’s bodies, such as the Uganda National Teachers Union (UNATU), in the quest for equal pay among teachers.

The salary discrimination has undermined teachers’ morale and teamwork, exacerbating shortages in critical subjects and perpetuating inequities in access to quality education.

According to the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) Act of 2018, under the rights management clause, the government of Uganda was supposed to increase the salaries of all public servants, with teachers receiving the highest bonus, mainly featuring the increase of both arts and science teachers.

Additionally, on July 7, 2022, the Parliament of Uganda passed a resolution to level the salaries of science and arts teachers, emphasizing that the teachers with the same qualifications doing the same work under similar working conditions and in the same salary scale be paid uniform compensation.

However, the government turned a deaf ear to the voices of the many and decided to raise the science teachers’ salaries, neglecting those of art teachers, creating a salary disparity between science and art teachers in secondary schools.

Will the government hear and value the teachers’ voices as a fulfilment of this year’s Teacher’s Day theme?

The threat of conducting an industrial action in January 2025, as declared by Filbert Baguma, the Secretary General of UNATU, on Friday, October 4, 2024, remains a paper tiger because the same was done in the recent past, and nothing has changed up to date.

In whom should the hope of teachers be?

In the past two years, teachers have conducted industrial action by laying down the tools, and as a result, UNATU has written letters seeking an audience, but nothing has been resolved concerning the matter, even after different encounters with President Museveni.

However, with the revelation made by Baguma about another letter written to the Ministry of Public Service concerning teachers’ salary enhancement, maybe their pleas will be considered.