4,000 schools to miss books on new curriculum
Activity. Senior Four students during career guidance at Budini Secondary School in Kaliro District last year. PHOTO BY ALEX ESAGALA
What you need to know:
- Beneficiaries. This year’s Senior One students will be the pioneers of the curriculum. They report to school on February 17.
- Subjects. The new curriculum will have 21 subjects instead of 43 in the current one. Senior One and Two students will study 12 subjects, 11 of which are compulsory. As they advance to Senior Three, the compulsory subjects will reduce to seven.
About 4,000 secondary schools will miss new textbooks as government rolls out the revised curriculum on Monday.
Ms Grace Baguma, the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) executive director, yesterday said they had prepared to distribute materials for the revised curriculum to about 4,000 secondary schools only to discover that there were more than 4,000 others.
“We are continuing to distribute materials. The copies may not be enough. We have been thinking of 4,000 but it looks like we will have to print more. Ugandans have given birth. When we went in the field, it seems there are more than 8,000 schools,” Ms Baguma said in an interview.
She urged those who will not get the books to download the material from the NCDC website.
“Let us use technology. Some of the materials will be put on our portal,” Ms Baguma said.
There have been setbacks to implement the curriculum whose review started 12 years ago. The latest was last week when Parliament voted to suspend its implementation on claims that teachers had not been trained and there were no materials in schools to aid the teaching and learning.
The government requested to be allowed to continue with the curriculum and correct the gaps along the way.
Education minister Janet Museveni presented their curriculum review journey before Cabinet on Monday and was called to proceed with the implementation.
Advice
Mr Alex Kakooza, the ministry’s permanent secretary, yesterday confirmed that there are more schools than they had planned for but asked those which will not get to improvise.
“We developed exemplars. Even the syllabus books we provided are not enough. The exemplars are on our website. Those who need them can go there,” Mr Kakooza said.
A teacher, who attended the training on the new curriculum but asked for anonymity, yesterday said the allocated time and funds were inadequate.
“Those of us who attended the training were paid Shs30,000 for five days as transport refund no matter the distance you came from. The days were not adequate for training… That organised chaos should not proceed to the secondary curriculum,” the source said.
The teacher said although there was a directive in December to have all primary schools teach Kiswahili, many schools are still struggling without teachers and books.
