Increment in education financing in 2025/26 budget welcome, more needed

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OPINION

By Sandra Coote

Currently, Uganda’s 2025/26 budget marks a meaningful shift in attitude towards public spending on education. The national allocation to the sector has surged to sh5.04 trillion, up from sh4.2 trillion in FY 2024/25, a notable 20% increase, signalling a shift towards prioritisation.

The expanded funding underpins key pillars: enhancement of UPE/USE, establishment of new “seed schools,” teacher recruitment and specialised training, plus digitised school inspections. The digitisation of inspections is a promising step towards accountability and quality monitoring, a move long needed in historically under-resourced schools.

However, more funding alone may not translate into better school performance. Uganda’s education challenge remains multi-layered including overcrowded classrooms, low teacher motivation, outdated curricula, and inequitable access across regions which has forced parents to opt for expensive private schools, no school feeding programme in rural schools as it has been estimated that only 30% of the rural schools in Uganda provide one meal a day to learners leaving majority of the learners to attend school on empty stomach.

Statistics indicate that in African countries, it costs families between 1.5 and five times more to enrol a child in a private school than in a public school.

In 2019, a World Bank study indicated that Uganda requires about $2b (about sh7.2 trillion) in addition to public funds through 2025 to ensure that all children complete primary school with basic literacy, numeracy and skills, and accommodate them in secondary schools.

Uganda’s education system has witnessed tremendous change, especially in critical financing, characterised by public, private, and household expenditures up to child enrolments and completion rates.

Whereas government spending on education has steadily increased, this has not led to any significant increases in key areas such as per-child allocations.

According to the 2024 Education Finance Watch report, Uganda’s spending on education as a proportion of GDP and as a share of total government expenditure fell far below the average for its income group.

For the past three years, education has received between 14% and 17% of the national budget, while the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) recommends at least 20%.  

Additionally, the per learner capitation (operation) grants given to schools for the day-to-day operation of the UPE schools are insufficient. Currently, the government provides sh20,000 per learner per year, which is below the National Planning Authority recommended threshold of sh63,546 for urban schools and sh59,503 for rural schools per pupil per year to achieve the desired quality of education.

The government should go beyond infrastructure and ensure schools are equipped with essential learning resources such as laboratories, textbooks, libraries, and ICT tools. Improving teacher quality through investments in pre-service and in-service training while addressing the issue of salary disparities, digital pedagogy, and career incentives is vital. Strengthening lifelong learning pathways, particularly Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and bridging secondary to tertiary education, is key to preparing youth for roles in industrialisation, agriculture, and ICT, which align with the national budget priorities.

The FY 2025/26 budget sh5.04 trillion investment in the education sector, is a major step forward, but for results to be seen, intent must be matched with outcomes. The success of this budget lies not only in its headline figure but in how effectively Uganda converts funds into well-trained teachers, well-built infrastructure, equipped schools, and students ready to drive the nation to its “Tenfold Growth Strategy” through human capital. The next 12 months call for budget monitoring, holding the education sector accountable not just for money spent, but for minds changed and lifted.

The writer is a programme associate with the Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group