The Minister of Education and Sports
Janet Kataaha Museveni has cautioned schools and teachers against compacting
contents of the syllabus. She says that the practice is hurting the performance
of students at several levels of learning.
The minister was reacting to the observation made by Uganda National
Examinations Board Executive Secretary Dan Odongo during the release of the
Uganda certificate of education results for 2019, early today.
Odongo observed that there is enough evidence to indicate that in many schools,
teachers are made to cover the syllabus by the end of senior three or latest
term one of senior four. This is done to supposedly create time for revision.
Mrs Museveni says the result of the practices is that some topics are skipped
or lightly dealt with and in the end, learners miss out the basic principles
adding that revision is ineffective when learners have not understood the
subject matter.
The Education Minister also notes that in addition to Compressing the Syllabus,
learners are kept in class from 6 a.m. until late, loaded with extraordinary
assessments which all together keep the learners with limited time for rest.
However, education specialist Fagil Mandy blames the vice to the Ministry’s
failure to supervise schools, especially in the private sector, in addition to
the commercialization of education which means that quality is measured on
first grades obtained at the end of the year.
Rhitah Namukasa, a secondary school teacher in Masaka District, attests that in
candidate classes, learners are often put under pressure, taught for hours
without rest and given numerous pre-tests all focusing on yielding better
results in national examinations.
“This is a serious issue and much experienced hitherto first-class schools.
Actually, they don’t even admit learners in senior four because of the same
reasons, they have nothing to teach during that time,” Namukasa says.
The education minister is rather convinced that the newly rolled out lower
secondary curriculum will address the challenges due to its learner-centred and
competence-based approaches.
However, Mandy insists that without proper inspection mechanism, the new
curriculum will also be abused.
The News Editor ,Reporter at Kagadi Kibaale community Radio
