Govt shelves proposed A-Level curriculum

The government has said it will not implement a new curriculum for the Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) next year.
This development was announced by the Minister of Education and Sports, Ms Janet Kataha Museveni, while releasing the results of the 2023 Uganda Certificate of Education at Nakasero State Lodge yesterday.

Ms Museveni said her ministry, despite having started reviewing the current A-Level curriculum, was forced to slow down the pace and instead focus on implementing the already active new Lower Secondary Level Curriculum.

Going slow
“Since Financial Year 2019/2020 to 2022/2023 alone, the government has invested at least Shs130b in the development and rollout of the revised Lower Secondary Curriculum. This excludes the initial funding injected in the earlier stages before the Financial Year 2019/2020,” she said.

She added: “And I must say we still need more resources to ensure that our schools are well acquainted with what it takes to implement the revised lower secondary curriculum the way it was designed to be implemented.”
Government in 2020 activated the revised lower secondary curriculum where they, among others, reduced the subjects from 23 to 20 and introduced competency-based learner-centered learning.

Under the shelved proposed A-Level curriculum, students of UACE would not need to repeat all the subjects but only do those that they have failed as it is done in universities. They would also have a leeway of studying up to five years, and vocationalise upper secondary education, among other reforms.

Ms Museveni yesterday confirmed that Uneb will effective this year start assessing Senior Four candidates under the new curriculum.
This would mean that the current Senior Four students would need to study using the new A-Level curriculum when they transition to Senior Five next year.

The First Lady, however, asserted that technical teams in the sector guided them that having learners of the revised lower Secondary Curriculum progress into A-level and utilise the existing A-Level curriculum does not in any way compromise their subject combinations.

Ministry position
“Furthermore, it does not jeopardise the academic grounding expected of them upon joining higher education. Let us first consolidate the implementation of the revised lower secondary curriculum before embarking on an overhaul of the A-Level curriculum. So, this is our position as a ministry,” she said.
She said “it is not wise to embark on another rigorous venture of a full review of the A-Level curriculum in the environment of limited resources across government.”
 “We cannot afford at this time to withdraw resources from the implementation of the new introduced revised lower secondary curriculum. Doing that shall completely mess up the entire sector,” Ms Museveni explained.