Overloaded classes to study in shifts – Janet

Education and Sports minister Janet Museveni yesterday said classes that have accumulated many students due to the closure of schools will study in shifts once the government reopens them.

The classes that will be overloaded include Senior One, Senior Five, and first year university classes.
Others are Primary One to Three, who have spent nearly two years without studying. 
This is because parents with children in the top and middle class will likely promote their children to the next level of learning.

Ms Museveni, while releasing the 2020 Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE) exams yesterday, said some students in overloaded classes will study in the morning while others in the evening.

“We have done this in the past and we will do it again. We are going to change the calendar to see how we will take bigger classes like Primary One, Two, and Three, who haven’t gone to school for a long time,” Ms Museveni said.

“When they go to school, then they will study in shifts. Some will go for morning classes up to lunch at 1pm and the others start from 2pm to 5pm,”Ms Museveni said.

She said the format of double shifts had been tried in the refugees camps.
Ms Museveni said they will announce the reopening dates for schools after Cabinet has approved it.
Early this month, school heads expressed worry about how the institutions will run two cohorts in the same class which they said will be tough. A number of them suggested that the government promotes all students to create room for the new entrants.

In the face of Covid threat, the government shut educational institutions first in March 2020 and again on June 18, after a post-first pandemic wave phased reopening, which was due to be completed, led to increased infections among students. 

The second lockdown, which ran for 42 days, has been partially lifted, but schools remain closed alongside places of worship, bars, gyms and concerts, rendering students stuck in the same classes.

With results of Primary Leaving Examinations (PLE) and Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE) examinations released last month, and now of Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education (UACE), questions arise about a clogged system.

The current Senior One and Senior Five students had studied for only three and two weeks, respectively before President Museveni imposed the first nationwide lockdown and closed schools in March last year.

The schools reopened in a phased manner and Senior One students studied for about a month while their Senior Five counterparts were due to return for third term of promotional examinations when the second lockdown was instituted. 

The same confusion applies to universities that are likely to have two cohorts of First Year students, with the current ones having hardly spent one month at campus before schools were closed again.