Govt to recruit 1,900 science teachers, equip laboratories

Kampala. Government will recruit 3,800 secondary school teachers across the country with 1900 of them, science teachers, in a bid to improve performance of students in the sciences.
Speaking at the release of 2018 Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) examination results in Kampala yesterday, the State Minister for Higher Education, Mr John Chrysostom Muyingo, said government is optimistic this will improve the performance in practical lessons.
Mr Muyingo said the government has earmarked the money to finance the teacher recruitment in the next financial year 2019/2020.
“Science teachers must now realize that failure to integrate theory and practical teaching will not produce learners that are suitably prepared for university and tertiary level science programmes. It is quite sad to hear that learners in Biology cram drawings instead of being taken through the essential skill of dissection that they will definitely need in medical school or other related disciplines. This must come to an end,” Mr Muyingo said.
“To address these challenges, Government has put in place a number of interventions. With the recruitment and Intensifying in– service training to improve on the quality of teaching, we shall see the number of students passing sciences,” he added.

More females
Mr Muyingo revealed that the ministry will also start a career guidance campaign to attract more female students to science subjects since the number of male science students exceeds females’.
He said government also plan to construct more laboratories and equip the existing ones in government-aided schools. The ministry will also purchase more science textbooks for all government-aided secondary schools to address the students’ chronic poor performance in science subjects at all levels of education.
Mr Muyingo also revealed that the ministry will not licence schools that do not have laboratories.
Mr Sam Kuloba, the commissioner for secondary education, said the government should put more emphasis on rural schools where most failure in sciences have been reported.
He said most rural schools depend on O-Level dropouts to teach students while in certain schools, one teacher teaches in more than one school.
The Executive Secretary of Uganda National Examination Board Mr Daniel Odongo said the 2018 UACE candidates showed inability to follow instructions and procedures during practical examinations.
“In science, there is evidence of teaching theory with very little practical experience given to the candidates. As a result, candidates in this group showed inability to follow instruction. There is a serious problem developing in Biology practical paper since students just crammed drawings from textbooks,” Mr Odongo said.