Private Schools warned against exploiting teachers

By Andrew Masinde 

The commissioner for secondary education, Uma Francis Agula has warned all private schools to stop exploiting teachers because they offer a service to their schools. He said teachers are subjected to too much work yet they are paid peanuts.

He was speaking at the annual general meeting of Association of Secondary School Head Teachers of Uganda at the UMA Conference Hall.

Agula expressed concern that many teachers from private schools have been reporting to his office that they are exploited: “How can you pay a secondary school teacher sh100,000, and you do not have sympathy, these teachers went to school so you should not exploit them.

Some schools make the teachers teach from morning until late in the night, others do not even have meals amidst all this too much work and at the end of the day they are paid peanuts, this has to stop, we are going to work with our inspectors to see that schools start respecting our teachers,” said Agula.

He also pointed out that he had discovered that some private schools that are having USE program are also charging too much money for school fees.

“We give you capitation grant so why do you charge abnormal fees from students, we are going to do a survey and if we discover there are schools doing it, we shall not hesitate to withdraw all the grants we have been giving these schools.

Soon, we shall set a fixed fee for all schools that receive this capitation grant such that no school charges extra fees, this money is for the poor so if you charge a lot then these children will miss out on school,” he said.