UNEB welcomes EPRC study on new O-level curriculum
The EPRC study, which was done under the Youth Employment Skills [YES] Pan-African Coalition for Transformation [PACT] programme, spotlighted serious concerns about the implementation of new curriculum and preparation of teachers to facilitate the same
KAMPALA, January 15, 2025 –– The Uganda National Examinations Board [UNEB] has welcomed findings from an EPRC study on the implementation of the revised ordinary level of education curriculum.
UNEB Executive Director, Dr Dan Odong said EPRC [Economic Policy Research Centre] findings concur with the information gathered by the examinations body. He indicated that EPRC findings were significant since they came from an independent entity outside the education sector.
“We have done some studies along those lines and when I [read] through your report, your findings agree with a lot of the information that we gathered. This coming from the EPRC which is outside the education sector, this will carry a lot of weight,” Odong said.
This was during a recent meeting at UNEB offices in Ntinda, Kampala. The EPRC study, which was done under the Youth Employment Skills [YES] Pan-African Coalition for Transformation [PACT] programme, spotlighted serious concerns about the implementation of new curriculum and preparation of teachers to facilitate the same. The meeting at UNEB was attended by the examination body’s senior staff and YES PACT members composed of officials from Ministry of Education, teachers, CSOs, and EPRC staff.
Uganda introduced the new competency-based secondary education curriculum in 2020. The first cohort of students to study under it sat their exams last October.
Dr Odong said the study recommendations will benefit second cohort of candidates. The first cohort of students to study under the revised curriculum sat for their final examinations last year. The results, to be announced soon, will shed light on whether students were well prepared or not.
Blessing Atwine, the EPRC Research Analyst, said EPRC study, Implementing Uganda’s revised lower secondary curriculum: the experiences of teachers and learners in review, found gaps in teachers’ training as there were contradictions in the information provided by different trainers; the generalised approach rather than subject-specific training left teachers struggling to adapt it to their specific teaching needs. There was also confusion on project work that learners must undertake during their school stay.
Dr Odong said UNEB received the curriculum documents at the end of 2022, which was late, yet it needed time to make sense of them and adapt an assessment framework. He said that some of the challenges would have been avoided if the Board had been involved in the process early enough.
He said EPRC team should disseminate the findings widely and follow up when the senior four [S.4] results are released “so that we can all continue learning as we implement.”
Alfred Kyaka, the Secondary Education Assistant Commissioner at the Ministry of Education and Sports, noted that secondary education is overly decentralised with the Board of Governors holding a lot of authority and can make critical decisions. This means the next line of engagement must take into consideration this category of players.
Odong noted that the current cohort of students is in a completely different curriculum mode of delivery – and it was expected it would continue to A-level. However, government is yet to introduce a revised curriculum at that level which could cause more confusion as students from Competency-based curriculum background proceed to A-level.
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