Kampala — FOLLOWING Minister of Finance, Ezra Suruma's budget announcement that the government is setting aside sh30b to cater for tuition and teaching for an anticipated 50Percent increase in enrollment of Senior One next year, it is now time to look into the modalities for Universal Secondary Education (USE) to avoid the shortcomings which befell UPE.
One of the most important areas to consider in USE is the role of the private sector. When UPE was introduced in 1997, there were about 8,000 (67Percent) government-aided primary schools and about 4,000 (33Percent) private schools. The enrolment in government primary schools was over 80Percent. The outlook for secondary education is totally different. The latest official figures show that out of 3,645 secondary schools in 2004, only 784 schools (22Percent) were government aided and the rest were private.
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