Kampala school fees in 2026: what changed, what did not

Termly fees at Kampala-district schools moved a national average of 6.4% in 2026, broadly tracking inflation. The headline number is reassuring and almost beside the point. The story sits in the dispersion: the spread of what schools did around that average is far more revealing than the average itself.

The average that hides the story

A 6.4% mean increase, set against headline inflation, reads as a sector simply holding its real prices steady. But a mean is a poor summary of a market where the schools at the top and the schools in the middle are playing different games. Average the two and you describe a school that does not exist.

We compared the published 2025 and 2026 fee schedules of every Kampala-district school in our database, term by term and level by level, rather than relying on a single advertised figure. Done that way, the market splits into clearly different behaviours.

Where the real movement was

The most interesting movement was below the average. A handful of mid-tier private schools held fees flat or cut them outright, a deliberate bet that a lower price will fill more desks and that volume will make up the margin. Against them, a cluster of established schools raised tuition ahead of inflation, confident their intake is price-insensitive.

• Top-tier schools: several raised tuition ahead of the 6.4% mean, betting that demand for their places holds regardless of price.
• Mid-tier private schools: a notable group held fees flat or cut them, chasing intake volume over per-pupil margin.
• The hidden extras: development fees, uniforms and lab fees crept up at several schools where headline tuition did not.

The extras that do the quiet work

The third behaviour is the one parents feel most and notice least. Where a school left tuition visibly flat, the increase often reappeared in the extras: a higher development fee, a revised uniform requirement, a new or raised lab charge. These items rarely make the comparison shopping because they are not the number on the banner, yet they can add a meaningful sum to the real cost of a term in UGX.

A flat tuition line with a rising development fee is not a flat school fee. The total a parent pays in a term is the only number that matters.

How to read your own school’s schedule

The practical advice for a Kampala family is to ignore the advertised tuition headline and total every line on the schedule, term by term, including the extras that are easy to overlook. Compare that all-in figure against last year’s all-in figure, not against the school’s own framing of its increase. A school that has genuinely held the line will survive that test; a school that has shifted the cost into extras will not.