Recently, the education ministry published the budget framework paper in preparation for discussions on the 2017/18 national budget. SAMUEL KAMUGISHA has been looking at some of the changes coming in the education sector’s budget.
The education sector is one of the eight key areas that will suffer budget cuts in the 2017/18 financial year if the proposed allocations contained in the budget framework paper are not revised. Although the total budget is estimated at Shs 30.3tn, up from just over Shs 25tn in the current financial year, eight key sectors, including education, could see their allocations significantly shrink.
Compared with the sector’s allocation in FY2016/17, government has proposed a 3.1 per cent cut for education. Government has suggested that the sector uses Shs 2.37tn – a figure that is Shs 77.5bn lower than Shs 2.448tn allotted in the current financial year.
The allocation falls short of the 2015/16–2019/20 second National Development Plan (NDPII) projections. According to the plan, 13.6 per cent of the total budget should have been spent on education in the FY2017/18. But the proposed allocation, according to the budget framework, is 10.6 per cent.
If the proposed budget is passed in its current form, the cuts could affect allocations to almost all the sector’s activities. The components of higher education, skill development and pre-primary and primary education will suffer the highest cuts.
The higher education budget will suffer a Shs 47bn cut, from Shs 157bn in the current financial year to Shs 111bn in 2017/18. Allocation to the skills development component will be reduced by Shs 33bn, from Shs the current Shs 216bn to Shs 183bn in the next financial year. Funding for pre-primary and primary education will reduce by Shs 26bn – from Shs 144bn in 2016/17 to Shs 118bn in 2017/18.
The budget for policy, planning and support services for the education sector will reduce by Shs 4bn from Shs 41bn in 2016-17 to Shs 37bn in 2017/18 while the secondary education allocation will reduce by about Shs 3bn from Shs 16bn to Shs 13bn in the same period.
Compared with the 2016-17 budget, allocation to the quality and standards component will reduce by about Shs 600m while that for monitoring and supervision will shrink by Shs 500m. The budget for physical education and sports will tumble by Shs 308m while that of special-needs education will plummet by Shs 55m.
An analysis of the cuts in the education sector allocations indicates shrinking donor funding and the finance ministry’s deliberate move to cut expenditure on consumptive items. For other components, there was simply no need to budget for them since they had been implemented while others were transferred to other departments.
PRIMARY
The Pre-primary and Primary education area will see a cut of over Shs 25bn – from about Shs 144bn in the current financial year to about Shs 118bn in FY2017/18.
While just over Shs 14bn will be spent on primary school instructional materials in the current financial year, there is no allocation for the same in the next fiscal year because “contract implementation is ongoing for procurement and delivery of instructional materials under the [Uganda Teacher and School Effectiveness Project] UTSEP project and part of the contract has been paid.”
Also, reduction in UTSEP project funding has led to a Shs 11.5bn slashing of construction and rehabilitation budgets for the next financial year. With this cut, only 138 selected primary schools in hard-to-reach areas will benefit from next year’s budget. For these, the remaining Utsep funding will see facilities such as classrooms, administration blocks, latrines, and teachers’ houses either constructed or rehabilitated.
But the cut for the primary education component has raised concern among social activists. Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group (Csbag) has recommended that about Shs 53.87bn be earmarked to erect primary schools in parishes that have no primary school.
“[This] will reduce the distance pupils cover to access schools and contribute towards increased rates of enrolment, retention and completion of school,” reads part of Csbag’s statement titled The budget we want for FY 2017/18.
Although the early childhood policy was launched last year, no allocation has been made to prioritise the same. This means that provision of the pre-primary level of education will largely remain in the hands of private education providers. Capitation grants for each pupil under Universal Primary Education will remain a measly Shs 10,000 per annum.
SECONDARY
According to the budget framework paper, expenditure on secondary education will be cut by about Shs 2.6bn, from just about Shs 16bn in the current financial year to about Shs 13.3bn in 2017/18.
Government has classified expenditure on policies, laws and guidelines (Shs 1.12bn) and monitoring and supervision (Shs 0.1bn) as consumptive items and cut the monies meant for these function. About Shs 1.34bn meant for training of teachers has been cut because of “reduction in donor allocation under the SESMAT component of development of Secondary Project”.
The budget cuts for the education sector also mean that 615 sub-counties of Uganda will have to wait longer to have a public secondary school – and 312 sub-counties may not have any form of secondary school unless private players step in. The reduction in budget for the education sector is telling of government postponement of its own commitment.
Although the education sector had requested for Shs 38bn for classroom construction and renovation, no provision for the same has been made in the proposed budget.
HIGHER EDUCATION
Under the higher education component, about Shs 39bn meant for construction and rehabilitation of facilities has not been provided for. Also, each public tertiary institution has seen its budgets slightly slashed.
For some universities, their demands to government could take longer to be met. For example, whereas Mbarara University of Science and Technology (Must) requested for Shs 28bn to recruit 731 lecturers, no allocation was made for this cause.
This means that lecturers will continue to double as clinicians at the Must teaching hospital. The Shs 6bn needed to recruit lecturers at Kyambogo University and Shs 5.5bn needed for the same purpose at Gulu have both not been provided. Kabale University will also have to wait a little longer for government to provide Shs 17bn for harmonisation of the nascent institution’s salary structures.
Under the skills development component, money meant for constructing and rehabilitating facilities such as administration blocks in Business, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (BTVET) institutions has also been cut. Reduction in donor funding will see Shs 10bn under this component slashed.
OTHER CUTS
Other areas that will suffer budget cuts include the supervision and inspection component. From Shs 4.6bn in the current financial year to the proposed Shs 4.1bn, the component will see a Shs 500m reduction.
The cut has already got education activists talking. According to Fiona Oriikiriza, a social activist with Initiative for Social and Economic Rights (Iser), the reduction of the supervision budget will not help absenteeism of teachers and teachers.
“The education sector will now see a lot of schools that don’t meet the basic requirements and minimum standards coming up, and teacher and pupil absenteeism will worsen, hence poor performance outcomes,” Oriikiriza said during the pre-budget dialogue held at Makerere University on January 24.
UNEB
Assessment body Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) will see a budgetary cut despite the increase in number of candidates assessed as a result of universal education programmes. Uneb’s budget has been cut from Shs 31.45bn in the current financial year to Shs 29.8bn in the next one.
The examinations body needs an additional Shs 8.2bn to deal with the increasing candidature at the end of primary, O- and A-levels in FY2017/18. If the Uneb budget is not revised, glitches could mar the 2017 final examinations. The assessment body might also struggle to pay invigilators, examiners and the release of examination results could delay.
NCDC
The budget for the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) will drop from Shs 8.5bn in the current financial year to Shs 6.7bn in 2017/18. According to the budget framework paper, the cut in the NCDC budget means that the primary and secondary departments of the curriculum body and the development of Btvet curriculum will be scaled down.
Although the education sector has set the commencement of the new lower secondary education curriculum for 2018, about Shs 1.8bn needed to fast-track the rolling out of the curriculum has not been allocated.
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