Despite large increases in enrolment rates of schools in Uganda, the education sector still faces challenges such as low school retention rates, poor quality of education, and a very low transition rate to secondary level. These challenges threaten the equal right to education, especially at the disadvantage of marginalised groups, who are greatly impacted by factors like gender, location, and monetary wellbeing.

Additionally, an analysis of the national education budget, made by the project’s lead organisation Civil Society Budget Advocacy Group (CS-BAG), discovered that Uganda’s education financing falls short of its national and international commitments by large. 

Together with Initiative of Social and Economic Rights (ISER), and Uganda Society for Disabled Children (USDC), CS-BAG will contribute to improve public investments in education, as well as strengthen governance and accountability that will promote equitable learning for all children in Uganda. The project will be implemented both at national level and in 3 local governments of Namayingo in Eastern Uganda, Yumbe in Northern Uganda, and Sheema in Western Uganda.  

The objectives of the project are threefold: 

• To strengthen citizen and government engagement for equitable budget allocation for public education in Uganda by 2026. 

• To improve the functionality of social accountability mechanisms at the local level to foster equitable learning for all children in Uganda. 

• To increase usage of citizen generated data to track progress of implementation of UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 target 4.5 on equality and inclusion for vulnerable populations to inform education planning and policy. 

Altogether, this project will strengthen citizen and government engagement on equitable public education financing, improve the functionality of social accountability mechanisms and increase the usage of citizen generated data on equality and inclusion for marginalised groups to foster equitable learning for all children in Uganda. 

To enhance transparency and accountability in education service delivery, CS-BAG aims to mobilise 180 CSOs and citizens. They will undertake education sector budget monitoring and expenditure tracking, advocacy to shape education sector budget making processes for government adherence to its national and international commitments, and refocus the education sector programming in response to the COVID-19 pandemic effects. All in all, they will be empowered to advocate for improvements in education service delivery. 

The alliance partner ISER will be leading efforts to enhance the capacities of social accountability structures at the local government level to improve governance and accountability, conduct legal, institutional, and policy audits on school governance and accountability. Whereas the other alliance partner USDC will ensure inclusion of marginalised groups including girls, children with disabilities, refugees, and children from poor backgrounds during project implementation.  

Finally, the three partner organisations will develop a Citizen-Generated Data tool, to advance the generation and usage of complementary data to track the status of implementation of UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SDG4 target 4.5. The tool will be used by community advocates for continuous monitoring and documentation of indicators under SDG4 target 4.5 in the target districts, and eventually the data will be used to inform advocacy initiatives at the national level around accelerating progress for SDG implementation in Uganda. 

Before receiving a full grant, CS-BAG participated in the Year Zero process of OC2. Year Zero is part of the Education Out Loud learning agenda and functions as a developmental pathway for the candidates. Read more about it here.