This article was first published on the New Vision website on March 23, 2023
By Ivan Tsebeni
Education experts have asked the Government to regulate the prices of learning materials which they argue are too costly for learners and schools.
According to the experts, Government’s intervention will safeguard schools and learners from inflated prices.
Speaking during the Education Policy Review Commission (EPRC) session at St Athanasius Primary School on Wednesday, Barbra Kwebiha, the school’s headteacher, said the dealers in learning materials have hiked prices driving some schools to buy books that are not recommended by the curriculum.
Kwebiha said the education sector, especially private establishments, has over the years been exploited, hence seeking for government’s intervention.
“It has become difficult for schools to access the teaching and learning materials to facilitate learning, and this has made several schools opt for other related materials, sometimes, not recommended by the National Curriculum Development Centre,” Kwebiha said.
She said that due to highly-priced learning materials, several schools do not have libraries to aid learning and therefore urged the Government to revisit the policies on school requirements which she said libraries are part of.
“Our children are facing hardships in answering the exams because they are taught using different materials that are opposite to those on the curriculum,” she said.
Notably, Agnes Mugisha, the headteacher of Nakivubo Blue Primary School, told New Vision that some schools, especially private ones, borrow books from government-aided ones to catch up.
She suggested that the Government procure items such as textbooks and laboratory equipment to support learners.
“In common cases, you find teachers teaching about equipment, some of which has never been touched by learners. Theories cannot fully explain the lesson,” Mugisha said.
In February last year, the Ministry of Education and Sports kicked off the process of overhauling the education system to come up with new policies that will replace the old outdated ones that were formulated way back in 1992.
The commission will investigate and inquire into the implementation of the decisions contained in the government white paper on the education of 1992 as a macro policy framework for human capital development in the country and the existence of policies on curriculum, teaching, assessment, and placement of learners where available.
The commission seeks to also identify policy, program, and project gaps in the Government’s 1992 White Paper on education, their causes, and their relationship to implementation failure among others.
