Secondary Teachers to Undergo Rigorous Training on New Curriculum

Government through the Ministry of Education and Sports plans to embark on a rigorous retooling program for all secondary school teachers to align their instructing skills with the recently revised curriculum.

Grace Baguma, the Executive Director of National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) revealed that the Shs 2 billion training will begin this year and run until 2020.

Following continued complaints from the experts in the education sector and sections of the public about the obsolete learning curriculum, the NCDC recently made changes and narrowed the number of subjects offered at Ordinary Level to only 20.

Some of the subjects considered to have similarities in content were merged while others deemed unnecessary were scrapped off the curriculum.

For long, many have observed that Uganda’s curriculum is filled with irrelevant topics and structured in a way that orients students to pass examinations, not attaining skills that are applicable in real life.

While speaking at a news conference on Friday, Baguma said that much as the curriculum has undergone changes, majority of the teachers still lack the capacity to implement the changes.

“Building the capacity of teachers to implement the curriculum changes is going t be critical. The Ministry of Education plans to train all in-service teachers with focus on the methodology,” she said.

“Even when we make reviews, some teaches still stick to using their university notes in teaching the students,” she added.

She observed that some teachers are preoccupied with piling work on the learners which either does not provoke critical thinking or is ahead of their age bracket.

Baguma said that the World Bank has already committed to provide part of the funding towards the retooling program, but did not reveal how much.

According to her, such in-service trainings must be continuous and so should the curriculum, in order to keep Uganda’s education system relevant to the changing dynamics in the way of life and work place.

Meanwhile, Uganda is set to host a four-day international conference themed on ‘curriculum for sustainable learning’, to be held at Imperial Golf View Hotel in Entebbe starting May 28.

The forum which is organized by NCDC and African Curriculum Organization (ACO) will bring together all curriculum development practitioners and educationists from across the globe. The event is aimed at discussing developments in curriculum as well as sharing best practices in different parts of the world.