Every new school term, Uganda seems trapped in an all-too-familiar drama: the Uganda National Teachers’ Union (Unatu) rallies its members into industrial action, and learners are once again left to pay the price.
Week after week, term after term, parents watch helplessly as their children’s education is disrupted, yet by the next term, the cycle begins anew.
It is a predictable, frustrating, and costly spectacle that has become a national embarrassment.
What is striking is the sheer repetition of this cycle. Despite weeks of negotiations, media coverage, and promises of resolution, the strikes end, teachers return to classrooms, and learners resume lessons — only to find themselves staring down the same grievances in the next term.
One would expect that after several rounds of strikes, UNATU leadership and the government would find a lasting solution.
Yet each term begins like a rerun of the last: letters dispatched, press statements issued, learners stranded, and parents left scrambling.
Parents continue paying full school fees while learning is interrupted. No compensation is offered, no adjustment to fees, and no recognition of the weeks of lost instruction.
In effect, the burden falls squarely on those who have no voice in the dispute: the children.
Meanwhile, the union and the government negotiate behind closed doors, and life goes on for everyone else as if nothing has happened.
This recurring scenario is not just frustrating; it is an abuse of the trust that families place in the education system.
Even more galling is the performative nature of the negotiations. Teachers and union leaders routinely pose for photos with the President at State House, smiling and projecting cordiality, only to return a few weeks later with the same grievances and strike notices.
The holidays, when schools are closed and there is time to resolve issues without disrupting learning, are never used for serious negotiation.
Instead, the beginning of each term becomes the perfect stage for dramatics — and learners, who should be the priority, are treated as mere props in this recurring play.
If the union leadership cannot negotiate a durable solution, they should step aside. Leadership is about results, not annual theatrics.
A union that cannot resolve a persistent problem should not expect the nation to tolerate repeated disruption. Their failure is measured not in headlines, but in the weeks of lost learning, the frustrated parents, and the demoralised students left behind.
The government also bears responsibility. Education is too important to be treated as a seasonal political game. Handing envelopes to a few teachers or issuing empty promises may temporarily quiet dissent, but it does nothing to prevent the next predictable strike.
Termly disruptions show that these short-term gestures are ineffective and, worse, insulting to the larger population who depend on functional schools. There is no excuse for playing with the futures of hundreds of thousands of learners in this manner.
Uganda cannot continue to normalise termly strikes as part of the academic calendar. The country’s education system is a national investment, and each disruption erodes that investment.
Learners lose critical classroom time, parents bear unnecessary stress and financial burden, and the broader society risks a generation of students for whom education is synonymous with interruption.
It is time for accountability on both sides. The union must negotiate in good faith and use holidays and other available windows to resolve issues without harming learners.
The government must treat education as a priority, not a political bargaining tool.
Empty gestures, half-hearted promises, and seasonal compromises are not enough. The children, parents, and future of Uganda deserve better. Education must take precedence over smiles, photos, and recycled grievances.
Enough is enough.