Parents petition ministry over schools charging illegal fees during lockdown

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | A section of parents have petitioned the ministry of education and sports over certain schools that have consistently requested illegal school fees to conduct online lessons during this period when schools remain closed.

In a petition written through Simon Tendo Kabenge Advocates, the angered parents note that whereas schools were closed on March 24, as one of the measures to prevent the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19), some private education institutions have established means contrary to laws to stay in touch with a fraction of learners.

The parents who sought that petitioning the ministry would be better than litigation contend that it is under such arrangement that schools are directly or under the disguise that they are collecting fees leaving out majority who cannot afford such expensive means.

“The said schools, many of which have refused to establish a board of governors or Parent Teacher Associations (through which these decisions would have been addressed), and therefore operate illegally have ignored and demeaned parents’ plea and even threatened to expel the students from school for non-payment of these fees,” their petition reads in part.

The petition comes barely a week when the education ministry issued a circular ordering schools to stop conducting their online teaching and charging parents fees for the service saying both actions are irregular. As a result, the ministry even forced the Law Development Centre to suspend its online lesson.

After noticing that education institutions may not be allowed to open soon, several schools resorted to looking for available alternatives to continue the teaching-learning process with many establishing communication online tools like Zoom, Microsoft team, google classroom and other learning management systems.

The schools in question could later write to parents asking them to pay a given fraction of normal school fees for their children to participate noting that the money would facilitate the systems and also help in payment of teachers. However, a few others have been conducting similar classes at no cost.

In a recent interview, Higher Education Minister John Chrysestom Muyingo noted that the arrangement was illegal given the fact that there is no policy guidance on how it can be done.

“We think the arrangement is discriminatory. The ministry is still developing an online teaching policy that will guide this form of learning but in its absence nothing of this must take place,” the minister told Uganda Radio Network.

Although the government has halted private online learning initiatives, they are also developing a distant learning mechanism where learners will be learning via television and radio. In addition to earlier interventions of supplying self-study materials. However, several educations have poked holes in the plan which according to some seems to be a white elephant.

Many others have been advocating for reopening schools with some standard operating procedures while others have tasked the government to declare 2020 a dead academic year.

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