The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Unlike other educational institutions where learners pay tuition per term, parents with children at Grace Intel School in Buziga, Kampala will pay daily fees. The school proprietor, Pastor David Jeremiah Kika, says that learners from nursery to P3 will pay Shillings 1,000 daily while those from P4 to P7 will pay Shillings 1,500.
The fees from Nursery to Primary two is Shillings 60,000, primary three to primary four Shillings 90,000, and primary five to primary Seven Shillings 120,000. The school has the capacity of enrolling 300 pupils.
On average, parents will part with Shillings 148,000 per child per term, which is far less compared to many public schools in Kampala. Many public schools charge Shillings 250,000 on average per term. Pastor Kika says that he began the school with the intention of helping parents who cannot pay lump sum fees.
Uganda Radio Network (URN) visited the school and found construction works ongoing.
A group of builders were still cementing the compound and painting classrooms. Pastor Kika says that they hope to open in a week or two upon completion of the renovation of the buildings. For now, the school has a single block comprising small rooms measuring between 5 to 4.5 meters and can only accommodate between 10 to 15 learners when observing the SOPs.
Asked why, Kika said teaching is his passion. He says that he started a school in Kamwokya where he would rent space at Shillings 10 million and would charge learners only Shillings 100,000. The school had an enrolment of 197 learners.
However, only between 50 to 60 learners could afford to pay school fees in full. According to pastor Kika, he found it challenging paying rent and teachers on time. He got an idea that if he can pay Shillings 1400 per day for smartphones, parents can pay daily for their children.
He explains that, “I found out that Shillings 1000 to 2000 is easy for a common person to pay and other classes of people in the day to day transactions. A person can afford to load Shillings 1000 airtime daily without feeling the pinch. So I decided to introduce it in the school fees payment, which many people have embraced,” Kika states.
Kika says that from the day he placed the advert on social media, he gets between 30 to 40 people who want to enroll their children in the school. He told URN that from Tuesday, he had received over 200 calls from many parts of Kampala.
“Some people were calling to confirm whether the school is real and in existence and some were saying that the school is located very far yet they like the payment method,” he said. Pastor Kika also said that at the moment, the school is not fully registered but he is working on the registration process. He says that he can as well accept parents who can pay lump sum based on their capability.
Susan Kisakye, a mathematics teacher says that she has got calls from parents in distant places like Nansana, Ntinda and as far as Masaka who want to bring their children but they are restricted by the distance.
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