By Fortunate Ahimbisibwe

Private schools which use deceptive advertising to market themselves will soon be exposed. The Ministry of Education and sports has contracted Afroeducare, a private education consultancy, to validate private schools across the country.

The firm will also grade private schools in categories of five star up to one star, according to a statement by the permanent secretary, Francis Lubanga.

A school which scores highest will be a five-star school, while that one with the lowest standard will be a one-star school.

The indicators are student welfare, health and safety, credentials of the proprietor and staff, the accommodation and facilities of the school, co-curricular programmes and activities, among others.

The government schools will also be graded later. The ministry decided to carry out this exercise following concerns that some schools did not meet the minimum standards.

Afroeducare Limited, manager, Collins Tugumisirize, says they have finished gathering information about all the private schools.

“We have started assessing the information which we shall use to grade the schools. This is an independent exercise and the grading will be based on what we have found on the ground,” he stated.

The central region has the highest number of private schools compared to other regions in the country.

According to statistics gathered by Afroeducare, the central region has 1,300 private schools, the western region has 525 and eastern has 522, while the north has 353 schools.

According to Uganda National Examinations Board, most private schools do not have laboratory equipment which explains why their performance is poor.

The ministry says the process of grading schools is intended to boost the quality of secondary education and gather data and information on existing private secondary schools in Uganda.

The results shall be published in a Schools Catalogue 2009, with school profiles and their grade results in June.