KAMPALA, Uganda — The Uganda Bureau of Statistics has released the comprehensive findings of the Baseline Education Census 2025, exposing deep structural deficits, acute classroom congestion and severe geographic disparities in the delivery of public education across the country.
The national census was presented by UBOS Executive Director Chris N. Mukiza on Thursday in Kampala. Executed between April and November 2025, the data collection exercise established an exhaustive baseline of learners, instructional materials, teaching personnel and infrastructural assets across all pre-primary, primary, secondary and non-tertiary institutions nationwide.
The report highlights an escalating resource crisis within government-aided institutions, driven by a disproportionate enrollment burden that far outpaces public educational infrastructure.
Infrastructure Strains and Resource Gaps in Primary Education
The census data reveals that Uganda has a total of 43,567 primary schools. Private institutions account for the vast majority of these facilities with 31,010 schools, while the public sector comprises 12,557 schools. Despite making up only 28.8 percent of the available primary institutions, public schools absorb the bulk of the country’s primary student population, hosting 57.2 percent of the total 9,118,314 learners.
This concentration of enrollment has triggered severe infrastructure and personnel strains in government schools. According to the bureau’s findings, the pupil-teacher ratio in public primary schools is exactly twice as high as that recorded in private facilities. Deficits in classroom capacity and sanitation infrastructure have also left public schools facing a pupil-classroom ratio and a pupil-stance ratio that are more than double the ratios found in the private sector.
On a national level, the average primary metrics stand at a pupil-teacher ratio of 34-to-1, a pupil-classroom ratio of 31-to-1 and a pupil-stance ratio of 42-to-1. The report also raises concerns over educational tracking, noting that 26.7 percent of all active primary school learners are operating above the official school-going age bracket of 6 to 12 years.
Secondary and Early Childhood Education Demographics
At the secondary education level, the bureau enumerated 5,498 institutions, consisting of 4,014 private schools and 1,484 public schools. Total secondary enrollment reached 2,008,133 students, with females constituting the majority at 53.3 percent. Government-aided secondary institutions accommodate 45 percent of these learners.
While the national student-teacher ratio and student-stance ratio at the secondary level both average 40-to-1, classroom congestion remains high. The national student-classroom average is 45-to-1, but this figure spikes within public secondary schools, where classrooms accommodate an average of 60 students per room.
In the early childhood development sector, the census tracked 2,374,674 pre-primary learners across 38,347 schools. The sector remains almost entirely dependent on private operators, with 8.3 percent of pre-primary schools attached to existing public institutions. Females represent 49 percent of pre-primary learners, though 22.5 percent of the total enrollment consists of children above the official early childhood age group of 3 to 5 years.
Beyond formal school cycles, the census evaluated 830 non-tertiary vocational and skills development institutions, which enroll 74,024 learners pursuing junior and national certificates.
Regional Disparities and Policy Deficits
The baseline data exposes a gap between current infrastructure and statutory government targets, specifically the directive to maintain at least one public primary school per parish and one public secondary school per subcounty.
The census confirms that 3,087 parishes across Uganda operate without a public primary school. Furthermore, 1,007 subcounties lack a public secondary school. From a regional perspective, the Buganda subregion holds the highest concentration of educational resources, registering the largest volume of schools and learners across the pre-primary, primary and secondary tiers.
The data collection process faced operational bottlenecks. Enumerators encountered data verification challenges, including attempts by some institutions to inflate learner counts through student ferrying, alongside administrative issues like shared Education Management Information System numbers and duplicate Learner Identification Numbers. The bureau also navigated a public school teachers’ strike, institutional resistance in the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area and early school closures. Field validation checks discovered that several public primary schools were registering unrecognized pre-primary pupils directly into Primary One classes to secure funding or resources.
Policy Recommendations
To address these vulnerabilities, UBOS outlines a series of interventions. The bureau calls on the Ministry of Education and Sports to enforce and fund the policy requiring a public primary school in every parish and a public secondary school in every subcounty to eliminate geographic exclusion.
The report emphasizes the need to streamline the transition of learners by replacing the current LIN with the National Identification Number system for tracking. UBOS also recommends that the ministry formally recognize, regulate and budget for the pre-primary classes currently operating within government primary schools to improve national planning and resource distribution.
