Parents petition MoE over demanded payments for E-learning.

By; Ben Musanje

01^st July 2020

A section of parents have petitioned the ministry of education and sports over certain schools that have consistently requested illegal school fees to conduct online lessons during this period when schools remain closed.

In a petition written through Simon Tendo Kabenge Advocates, the angered parents note that whereas schools were closed on March 24, as one of the measures to prevent the outbreak of the Coronavirus (COVID-19), some private education institutions have established means, contrary to laws to stay in touch with a fraction of learners.

The parents who sought that petitioning the ministry would be better than litigation contend that it is under such arrangement that schools are directly or under the disguise that they are collecting fees leaving out majority who cannot afford such expensive means.

“The said schools, many of which have refused to establish a board of governors or Parent Teacher Associations (through which these decisions would have been addressed), and therefore operate illegally have ignored and demeaned parents’ plea and even threatened to expel the students from school for non-payment of these fees,” their petition reads in part.

The petition comes barely a week when the education ministry issued circular ordering schools to stop conducting their online teaching and charging parents fees for the service saying both actions are irregular. As a result, the ministry even forced the Law Development Centre to suspend its online lesson.

After noticing that education institutions may not be allowed to open soon, several schools resorted to looking for available alternatives to continue the teaching-learning process with many establishing communication online tools like Zoom, Microsoft team, google classroom and other learning management systems that have to be paid for by parents.

The Higher Education Minister John Chrysestom Muyingo has since warned such schools that the arrangement was illegal given the fact that there is no policy guidance on how it can be done.