The Ministry of Education and Sports has issued a directive ordering all educational institutions concurrently running the Ugandan national curriculum and international academic programmes to separate their operations and obtain distinct licenses or face immediate regulatory shutdown.
The directive is part of the Government’s roll-out of the newly introduced Basic Requirements and Minimum Standards for International Schools (BRMS-IS), aimed at standardizing private and foreign-curriculum education across Uganda.
Under the revised regulatory framework, the Ministry has outlawed the practice of running "dual-curriculum" systems under a single institutional registration, administration, and campus structure.
School proprietors who offer national pathways alongside international systems, such as Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE), the International Baccalaureate (IB), or Pearson Edexcel, must now establish distinct administrative setups, dedicated facilities, separate accounting structures, and obtain independent licenses for each curriculum track.
The ministry emphasized that allowing schools to mix curricula under unified registrations had created severe supervisory and compliance loopholes. The ambiguities made it difficult for regulatory inspectors to verify teacher qualifications, assess learning environments, evaluate infrastructure safety, and ensure adherence to Uganda's Education Act.
Under the new standards, any international curriculum provider operating in Uganda must be legally registered with the Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB), be formally licensed and accredited by the Ministry of Education and Sports, and demonstrate proof of land ownership or hold a verified tenancy lease of at least four years.
The policy also requires international schools to enhance transparency by publicly disclosing their fee structures to protect parents from arbitrary fee hikes, while ensuring teacher recruitment adheres to fair and balanced employment standards.
The Ministry warned that institutions that fail to split their operations and regularize their licensing status within the specified regulatory transition period will have their operational licenses revoked and face closure.
