Millions given to schools but Uganda hasn’t learnt how to spend them

By BERNARD BUSUULWA

Even as allocation to Uganda’s education sector surged over the past few years, there are fresh concerns that weak absorption capacity for budgeted funds and dwindling quality look set to scuttle learning.

According to civil society, the high investment has not helped to sort out perennial problems such as teacher shortage, absenteeism in rural schools and heavy administrative costs among others.

It now wants the government to audit the use of public funds to the education sector.

The education sector took the lion’s share of the national budget estimated at Ush1.4 trillion ($587.2 million) edging out works and transport and health which were allocated Ush900 billion, ($378 million) and Ush666.6 billion ($279.6 million) respectively.

Though more resources are being directed at primary and secondary education in a mission to deepen literacy levels and achieve Millennium Development Goals, poor quality threatens government policy objectives.

Thus, rising enrolment numbers are falling short of reasonable competence standards.

The Finance Ministry, though aware of the performance gaps, is yet to devise sustainable solutions to those challenges.

The civil society also took issue with low absorption capacity as brought out by several government departments that have held back implementation of vital programmes due to operational constraints faced under the budget output based system.

The result-oriented system requires departments to design quarterly workplans and prepare evaluation reports for all budgeted activities prior to receiving funds for subsequent accounting periods.

Many ministries have experienced delays in disbsursement of funds and implementation of activities, leading to unfulfilled targets and unutilised funds that are returned to Treasury.

The civil society is equally dismayed at what it terms a shallow focus on the unemployment crisis in the national budget.

“The education sector is meant to receive 17.7 per cent of GDP but primary education alone receives five per cent while skills and vocational training programmes are getting only 2.2 per cent yet unemployment remains rampant. Untimely supplementary expenditure most of which goes to security, State House and other public administration costs that are non productive has also severely distorted the budget cycle,” said Julius Mukunda of Forum for Women in Democracy

Poor inspection

Underperformance in the education sector is largely reflected by glaring weaknesses in schools’ inspection.

Lack of a vibrant inspection system has accelerated teacher absenteeism in remote rural schools, worsened class grades and disparities in national exam performance.