The Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) is celebrating 25 years of Universal Primary Education (UPC) in Uganda.
The programme that provides free education in government primary schools commenced in 1996 with 2.5 million learners enrolling.
The numbers, according to the ministry & Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), have since gone up and now stand at 8.6 million in 2023.
The ministry said the increase is a sign that the government has accorded an opportunity to many children in the country who would have been in villages without acquiring education.
Ismael Mulindwa, the Director of Basic and Secondary Education at the ministry, told journalists at Uganda Media Centre this morning, that the government launched UPE to provide free education to all children in the country.
Since then, significant progress has been made in improving access to education, he said.
He added that over the past 25 years, the Ugandan government has invested heavily in education infrastructure, teacher training, and curriculum development and also implemented various policies and programs aimed at increasing access to education.
“As a country, we are on course to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning through universal education from Primary to Secondary levels.
In this way, we have been able to restore Gender parity with the enrollment of females and males almost balanced,” he said.
Mulindwa highlighted that the pupil-teacher ratio, which gives an indication of contact between pupils and teachers in classrooms, has improved along with large quantities of learning materials disbursed in schools.
