Policy Coherence for Development

The elimination of school fees at Uganda's primary education level was accelerated by the 1996 first direct presidential elections. Since the inception of the universal primary education in 1996 and its actual operationalization in 1997, universal primary education is synonymous with primary education. Because school fees were eliminated before infrastructural improvements in the school system had been undertaken, the access shock created by the elimination of fees resulted in a substantial initial decrease in resources available per pupil and a large increase in the pupil-teacher ratio. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the policy incoherencies as well as research or knowledge gaps relating to Uganda's primary education. Nevertheless, what happens in other sectors outside the education sector has strong implications for the realization of the universal primary education objectives. Uganda's universal primary education policy is being undermined by policies within the education sector and policies in other sectors. As such, there is need to mainstream universal primary education into all relevant sectoral policies using the Education-In-All-Policies Approach, which would be in the nature of the Health-In-All Policies Approach as well as the Gender-In-All-Policies Approach.