(Published on Wednesday, January 5, 2022)
By Nelson Kiva
With the reopening of schools, secondary school students will be introduced to a competence-based curriculum. Throughout the month of January, Mwalimu will explore various aspects of the curriculum. This week, Nelson Kiva, presents an overview of the competence-based curriculum…
The 2022 Senior One class, will be introduced to the national syllabus for the competence-based curriculum when schools reopen next week.
The curriculum is a paradigm shift from theory-based assessment and will also include a vocational skill. The new curriculum will also reduce content overload, foster learner-centered pedagogy, competence-based approach and criterion-referenced assessment, among others.
According to officials at the education ministry, the move is aimed at addressing the skills gap with the fourth industrial revolution in sight.
Education experts have welcomed the competence-based curriculum as a critical step for Uganda currently grappling with alarming rates of youth unemployment.
According to government data, Uganda unemployment rate for 2020 was 2.44%, a 0.72% increase from 2019. “We have many unemployed Ugandans who have qualified from universities and when you ask them what they can do, they will tell you that they are still waiting for the results meaning that our curriculum has been grooming job seekers and not creators,” Tom Kibirango, a teacher at St Catherine Bujuuko in Mpigi district said.
Competence-based assessment, Kibirango said, emphasises the elaborate outcomes of a learning process in form of acquired knowledge, skills and attitudes rather than focusing on what subject content.
What’s New?
The curriculum reforms as contained in the January 23, 2020 circular signed by the executive director of the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC), Grace Baguma, aims at improving quality of education in order to produce a secondary school graduate with employable skills that are competitive in the job market.
Baguma said the reforms will also improve efficiency and effectiveness in curriculum delivery through reduced content overload and contact hours in the classroom by fostering learner-centred methods of teaching.
“To prove their competency, the learner must demonstrate an ability to work through specific units of competences using the benchmarks provided by industry-defined standards,” she said.
The competence-based curriculum focuses on skills. We want our learners to be able to do things on their own instead of cramming notes dictated by the teachers.
We are moving from rote learning for the sake of passing exams, to facilitate learners to understand the concepts and apply them,” she said.
“There is a shift from learning outcomes that focus mainly on knowledge to those that focus on skills and deeper understanding,” Baguma said.
New Curriculum to Focus On Skill Acquisition
The Assessment Process
The curriculum, among others, groups each subject into themes of related topics and every topic has a set of learning outcomes.
This will involve three stages of assessment which include the school-based assessment, world of work assessment and the overall Uganda Certificate of Examination (UCE) by the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB).
The school-based assessment is conducted at the completion of every topic by the teacher. The scores the child gets, will then be submitted to UNEB and the continuous assessment submitted will form 20% of UNEB’s assessment at the end of the O’level learning cycle.
The final Senior Four exams will only cater for 80% of the score. Per the curriculum, if the school fails to submit the results of a child, that child will not be allowed to sit the final exams.
The ministry will have a learner’s identification number even if a learner changes school, the same number will be used to remit marks to UNEB.
The world of work assessment which will be done at Senior Three for eight vocational subjects will be conducted by the Directorate of Industrial Training (DIT).
The certificate by DIT issued at Senior Three, will be a UCE equivalent. Which means at the end of Senior Four, a learner will have two certificates, one by DIT and the other by UNEB.
The skill-based certificate can be used by a learner to access formal employment even if he or she drops out of school.
The DIT acting director, Patrick Byakatonda, said the directorate had completed preparations to take up the task by developing the assessment standards for all the 78 profiled vocational occupations where a student will be required to pursue only one.
The first assessment before COVID-19 interruption was scheduled to take place in 2023.
“We are done with developing different packages of different occupations and they are ready to be taught in schools,” Byakatonda said.
The 78 vocational occupations under the new curriculum are condensed under agriculture, art and design, technology and design, nutrition and technology, physical education, information and communication technology and entrepreneurship.
The move, according to Byakatonda, is in line with the Uganda Vision 2040 which emphasises that students will be accorded opportunities to excel in the skills areas they are placed into.
He added that under the new curriculum, even those who acquire a skill outside school will be assessed and issued with a workers’ permit equivalent to a Senior Four certificate as long as they pass.
The final general assessment will be conducted by UNEB at the end of the cycle through setting questions as it has been doing but assessment will be out of 80% as the 20% will be from usual school assessment.
How It Works
The compulsory subjects are English language, entrepreneurship, mathematics, kiswahili, history and political education, physical education, geography, religious education [CRE or IRE], physics, chemistry, general science for SNE and biology.
According to NCDC, a school may identify up to 15 subjects; 11 of which are compulsory in Senior One and Two, plus four elective subjects depending on the capacity and availability of resources. The learner is free to choose one elective subject in Senior One and Two, which will give him/her a total of 12 subjects.
The electives are sub-divided into two groups, the first group made up of foreign languages, local languages/Uganda, sign language and literature in English.
Group two include agriculture, art and design, performing arts, Information and Communication Technology [ICT], nutrition and food technology and technology and design.
On transition to Senior Three and Four, the learner will study seven compulsory subjects plus a maximum of two electives or a maximum of three electives for learners with special learning needs. The rest of the classes will continue with the curriculum of 2008 (for UCE) when the competence one rolls on.
The compulsory subjects at this level are English language, mathematics, history and political education, geography, physics, chemistry and biology.
The elective subjects are in three categories and category one, include Uganda sign language, Kiswahili, literature in English, local language and foreign language.
Category two has performing arts, art and design, agriculture, entrepreneurship, physical education, nutrition and technology and Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
And in the last elective category, there is Christian religious education and Islamic religious education.
Ministry’s Take
Dr Kedrace Turyagyenda, the director of education standards at the education ministry said competence-based curriculum is a welcome boost to the country’s education system adding that it is ideal to be implemented in all classes, right from primary school.
“Simply following textbooks to cover the syllabus is ridiculous. The revised curriculum allows the learner to learn and apply knowledge any time,” Turyagyenda said.
She said although the old curriculum did not set out to encourage rote learning, many teachers made it appear so because they stuck to only textbooks.
“Teachers did not help learners to relate textbook knowledge to real life. The purpose of teaching is to ensure that the person learns.
You can only say that you have taught if a person has learnt. And, you can only say a person has learnt if they can do something. Knowledge must make sense,” Turyagyenda said.
New Vision Lauded
Baguma has lauded the New Vision for the competence-based study materials and the ongoing competence-based assessment that was carried out last month.
The assessment helped prepare the learners, especially those in Senior One or those joining Senior One, for the revised curriculum.
“We are happy that the New Vision has used the new curriculum to develop the reading materials and the assessments.”
The assessment, according Barbara Kaija, the Vision Group Editor in Chief, is intended to enable learners across the country to demonstrate knowledge and skills acquired from different classes.
The competence-based assessment conducted from November 29, 2021 throught out December was the first first ever competence-based curriculum assessment for secondary school learners.
“The importance of this assessment is that it helped prepare the learners, especially those in Senior One or those joining Senior One, for the revised curriculum being rolled out when schools open.”
In order to aid continued learning, Vision Group through the New Vision and its luganda publication, Bukedde has been publishing study materials right from the onset of the lockdown in March 2019.
Vision Group CEO, Don Wanyama has since indicated that the Vision Group assessment programmes are aimed at helping to inform parents and schools’ decisions ahead of schools’ reopening next week.
Outstanding Vision Group education programmes include PASS PLE and Mwalimu. The assessment questions and answers all through have run from Monday to Friday with two pages devoted in each issue. The assessment covered all the subjects taught at O’level.
Exams Certification
This will involve three stages of assessment which include the school-based assessment, world of work assessment and the overall Uganda Certificate of Examination by the UNEB.
Is It Worthwhile?
Lower secondary curriculum review started in 2018 with the process of evaluating approaches to assessment at NCDC.
The revised syllabi and assessment guidelines were agreed and adopted by the education minister in January 2019. The new curriculum has since been lauded by the Curriculum Foundation for being based on clear values and principles.
The reforms in the curriculum according to the education ministry, also target creating time for research, project work, talent development and creativity.
Uganda embarked on curriculum reform process starting with the lower primary (thematic curriculum) in 2007 which guides teaching and assessment from Primary One to Primary Four to align its education system with its development targets including Vision 2040.
In the East African Community, it is only Uganda which had delayed to reform its colonial set-up curriculum to a pro-industrial one.
The block has since recognised the fundamental importance of education, science and technology in economic development through harmonised curricula, examination, certification and accreditation institutions; joint establishment and support of scientific and technological research and identifying and developing centres of excellence in the region.
In response to the challenge of providing quality education for sustainable development in May 2015, Kenya announced that it was switching from objectives-based curriculum to a competence-based curriculum.
The proponents of Kenya’s competence-based education argue that by focusing on competencies and skills, the country was better suited to ensure education responds to the needs of society as articulated in Kenya Vision 2030.
