Teacher pay system to change: Education ministry to use biometric tracking to determine monthly teacher salaries

WAKISO, Uganda — The government will begin paying teachers based on their daily attendance starting July 1, a radical policy shift aimed at curbing chronic absenteeism in public schools.

Under the new reform, only teachers with at least a 95% attendance rate will receive their full monthly salary. Those falling below this threshold will receive half pay and face potential removal from the government payroll.

Raymond Pedo, a principal human resource officer at the Ministry of Education, confirmed the development during the Education Service Commission annual performance review held recently at Lake Victoria Serena Golf Resort and Spa.

It is one of the reforms that will cure absenteeism, Pedo said. Your attendance is key and you should be on duty from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

To implement the policy, the government is integrating the Teacher Effectiveness and Learner Achievement system, known as TELA, with the Human Capital Management payroll system. TELA uses smartphones equipped with GPS and biometric facial recognition to monitor teacher presence in real time.

Teachers are required to scan their faces at 8:00 a.m. and clock out at 6:00 p.m. Those who fail to clock out are automatically marked absent for the day. Perennial absentees will be replaced during subsequent recruitment exercises.

The government has distributed more than 14,000 gadgets to 12,549 primary and 1,524 secondary schools to support the rollout.

While some school leaders welcomed the move as a step toward full accountability, others expressed concern. Samuel Luboga, chairperson of the Education Service Commission, cautioned that teaching involve duties beyond the classroom, such as lesson preparation and grading, which the system may not capture.

A 2021 report by the Inspectorate of Government estimated that teacher absenteeism cost the country 180 billion Ugandan shillings in 2019 alone. The report also linked low teacher engagement to a student truancy rate of nearly 20%.

Recent TELA data shows varying performance across the country. The Teso subregion recorded the highest attendance rate at 93.4% during the second term of 2025, while the Toro subregion recorded the lowest at 56.3%.