ATTENTIVE: Senior One students at Awere SSS for displaced children in Gulu Municipality in class on Tuesday

By Charles Ariko

THE Uganda People’s Congress has scoffed at the Universal Secondary Education (USE) programme, just four days after its commencement.

The party said it was doomed to fail like universal Primary Education.
In a strongly-worded statement read by the party president yesterday, UPC described USE as “sub-standard, cheap and populist education” meant to keep the majority of Ugandans in a vicious cycle of poverty.

“It is part of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) policy to keep the majority of Ugandans in poverty and deprivation, while a patrimonial and parasitic class that thrives on State patronage and corruption benefits from first class education by attending first world schools,” said Miria Obote at press conference at the party headquarters in Kampala.

She said under past UPC administrations, children of the poor had an opportunity to study in good schools funded by the Government.

She added: “President Museveni and several of his ministers and generals would never have had quality education if UPC implemented UPE and USE in such a haphazard and thoughtless way.

In their ungratefulness to the people of Uganda, they have put in place policies to keep the poor in a vicious cycle of poverty.”

She blamed the NRM government for “a growing rot in public universities and the education sector. Before the NRM came to power, there were no incidences of exam leakages, forgery of university diplomas and degrees.

There was quality control of education in tertiary institutions. Today, the NRM mafia has invaded even the former bastion of quality education and research.”

She continued: “General Museveni’s populist education policy, which is based on quantity rather than quality, has resulted into a stunted nation manned by poorly-trained manpower.”