This article as first published on the New Vision Website on April 16, 2022
By David Lukiiza
JINJA – Teachers from Eastern Uganda have commended the government for revising the old lower secondary curriculum to a new curriculum that focuses on students’ competencies.
This was during the countrywide teachers’ awareness and sensitization workshop organized by the Ministry of Education and Sports at Jinja College School on Friday (April 14).
The sensitization training, which attracted hundreds of headteachers and directors from various schools in the Busoga region, was facilitated by teams from the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) and officers from the Directorate of Industrial Training (DIT).
Oliver Nambi the headteacher at Busoga High School in Kamuli, said the new lower secondary curriculum has been long overdue, but it has come to solve the unemployment problem the country has been struggling with for a long time.
“The new lower secondary curriculum has come at a time when the country is facing a huge unemployment gap, leaving many graduates with no option other than being exported as labour,” she says.
Nambi, however, noted that the curriculum is here to solve issues of productive labour loss to other countries.
“The curriculum requires sending out a candidate who is ready to compete in the world of work,” she said.
Nambi also commended the government, through DIT and NCDC for an initiative to train teachers on how to implement the curriculum.
“Though some of the teachers had taken a brief training when the curriculum had just been enrolled in 2020, a lot of questions were still unanswered, especially in regards to how to interlink the old with the new curriculum,” she said.
Deo Peter Mulamba Headteacher at St John Bosco Senior Secondary School, Kamuli said though teachers were trained at the introduction of the curriculum, much was still lacking.
“At first, we did not know that the curriculum was mandatory for all senior three students; however, in today’s workshop, we are going back as converted groups,” he said.
Mulamba said that, though DIT had distributed the study materials to most of the schools, it was still a white elephant to most of them.
“Last year we received training manuals for various occupations, but it was still hard for teachers to break down the information; however, today’s training has helped most of the teachers here understand how to use these manuals,” he said.
John Stephen Ziraba the head teacher at Buzaya Senior Secondary School, Kamuli District, said one of the challenges they faced during the implementation is that parents have not been sensitized on how to support the curriculum.
“Most of our parents are still rigid to the old curriculum, where it has become very hard for them to support their children, such as by buying the required tools for a given occupation, such as baker, among others, he said.
Sarah Naido a senior inspector of schools at the ministry, however, asked school administrators to work with the ministry when it comes to sensitizing parents about the new lower secondary curriculum.
“The ministry through DIT has done enough sensitization on the curriculum through the media, however, we are asking schools to work with us in sensitizing the parents through parent-teacher meetings and show them all the benefits of this curriculum. I believe the same approach is working in other schools,” she said.
In 2020, the government, through the Ministry of Education and Sports, revised the lower secondary curriculum to improve the quality and relevance of secondary education.
It also aims at producing a secondary school graduate with employable skills that are competitive in the world of work, which will fulfil Uganda’s vision for 2040.
