Kiira College Butiki

Kiira College Butiki (KCB) commonly referred to as Butiki, is an all-boys boarding public secondary school (high school) located in Jinja district, in the Eastern region of Uganda. The school is located on Butiki hill, in Namulesa trading center, along the Jinja-Kamuli Highway. It is approximately 14 kilometers (approx. 8.7 miles) from Jinja town. The school was named after River Nile (which is known as Kiyira among the locals i.e. the Basoga people). The Nile river derives its source from Lake Victoria in Jinja. The school motto is Discipline & Hardwork. The school was founded in 1959. As a public secondary school that is run by both. Unlike in developed countries like the USA, the funds used to run public schools are from both the Government (through the Ministry of Education) and from private tuition agreed upon by school PTA committees of the respective school; a public-private interaction funding. Teacher salaries are mainly paid by the Ugandan Government. However, teachers also receive allowances from the tuition paid by the students.

Note that unlike in countries like the United Kingdom or the USA, Boarding schools in Uganda do not identify students as being from a high social class. For the matter of fact, boarding schools are a convenient way of ensuring that students, mainly those from rural places (60% of attendees) do attend school without transportation inconveniences.

The school was founded by the Busoga local administration (known as the "lukiiko" in Lusoga) in 1959 to improve education among the Basoga boys. The only school in Busoga region that was for Boys was Busoga College Mwiri. However, while initially Mwiri was intended to offer education to only sons of members of the Busoga royal family including chiefs and other prominent Busoga political figures with a few locals, this vision was thrown into tatters when Mwiri (presumably from political pressures) embarked on recruiting students from other areas in Uganda. Competition for enrollment became so stiff in that, the enrollment of the Basoga boys was dismal. This led to the Busoga Local lukiiko to establish another boys-only school to serve the Basoga boys, hence Kiira College Butiki. However, the same enrollment ghosts from Busoga College Mwiri haunted Butiki and the latter also embarked on a national recruitment for boys from other areas of Uganda. There is a long known historical academic "rivalry" between students from Mwiri and Butiki.

Butiki falls in the category of Public schools in Uganda. Public schools are mainly Government aided institutions through the Ministry of Education. Until recently, (in the mid 1990s), Public schools were considered to be more powerful in academic terms compared to private schools. However, with the introduction of a privatized economy by the NRM government in the 1990s, many private schools embarked on a policy of recruiting academic staff from public schools, and some private schools have recently started outperforming the historical public schools (based on the pass rate in National exams such as UCE and UACE).

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