Government committed to enhance financing for Education sector
The First Lady and Minister of Education and Sports Mrs. Janet Museveni has assured the Global Partnership for Education that Government of Uganda will continue increasing its financing to the education sector as the national budget also increases.
Mrs. Janet Museveni was on Friday meeting Ms. Alice Albright, the Chief Executive Officer of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), who called on her at State House Entebbe to discuss about Uganda’s domestic financing for education as a requirement for the next GPE Grant allocation.
Uganda is a beneficiary of 100 million USD funding from GPE and is preparing to apply for the second round of the grant, but it has to first overcome the challenge of raising the percentage of the Government’s budget allocation to the education sector, which is one of the conditions.
Mrs. Museveni argued that though domestic financing to the Education sector in Uganda is not yet at the GPE’s required 20%, the GPE should be considerate of the fact that there has been steady increase each year in the Education sector’s budget allocation in reality.
She explained that in the Financial Year 2014/2015, when Uganda became a beneficiary to the GPE funding, the education sector budget by Government of Uganda, excluding donor support, was Sh.1,794 trillion and it has steadily been increasing since then to the current Sh.3,081 trillion in this financial year 2019/2020. This is an increase of 2.5 times. “We are hoping that our country’s budget will not remain as it is for a long time. We believe that it will improve as we go forward. We are hoping that our oil will start running soon and we will start earning some income and I believe the education sector will get an improved budget”, she said.
She thanked Global Partnership for Education for its support that has enabled infrastructure in the schools, training of teachers, teaching and reading resources in the classrooms and improvement of the work done in the Education sector. She also requested GPE to appreciate the improvement Uganda has made and the responsibility it has taken up in the region with refugees. “We cannot thank you enough for this programme and we are praying and hoping that we will really be able to access GPE 2 because what it will help us do as a country will be remembered for a long time”, she said.
GPE’s Chief Executive Officer, Alice Albright, congratulated Uganda for what she described as terrific strides made in the education sector and especially the remarkable approach to integrating refugee children into education. She explained that the GPE funding model requires countries applying for the programme implementation grant to demonstrate government commitment to fund the education sector and that the GPE Board is increasing focus on the question of domestic financing because they want to see consistent investment in the education sector.
She emphasized that GPE, as a partnership, does not want the international money to displace the domestic money since the two are supposed to facilitate different things. She advised Uganda to continue dialoguing on how to reverse the current trend of domestic financing for the education sector which currently shows the percentage as going down.
The Minister of Finance, Planning and Economic Development Matiya Kasaija explained that the bulk of the money in Uganda’s budget is going to sectors that will assist the economy to expand so that there is an increase in domestic revenue which can then sustainably be used to fund the social sectors, education inclusive. He said that Government has funded the education sector, but the problem is that GPE looks at the trend in terms of percentages. He added that after some of the projects consuming much of the budget will end in 2 to 3 years’ time, there will be more domestic funding injected in the education sector.
The GPE’s Chief Executive Officer, who was in Uganda for two days, was accompanied to State House Entebbe by officers from the GPE Secretariat in Washington DC, USAID’s Kay Leherr the Chair of the Education Development Partners, DFID’s Isla Gilmore, Kirill Vasiliev from World Bank Uganda and Nabendra Dahal of UNICEF. The meeting was also attended by senior technical officers from the Education Ministry led by the Permanent Secretary Alex Kakooza.
The Global Partnership for Education is a multi-stakeholder partnership and funding platform that aims to strengthen education systems in developing countries in order to dramatically increase the number of children who are in school and learning. GPE receives funding from 29 donor governments and philanthropic foundations. These are United Kingdom, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, European Commission, Australia, Sweden, Spain, United States, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, UAE, Japan, Russia, Luxembourg, CIFF, finland, Korea, Open Society Foundation, Dubai Cares, Stichtung Benevolentia (Porticus), Romania and Rockefeller Foundation. Uganda benefitted under the 2015 -2020 GPE Strategic Plan and successfully implemented the Uganda Teacher and School Effectiveness Project (UTSEP), which will close in March 2020.