Minister explains new lower secondary school curriculum
KAMPALA, February 22, 2025 – Products of the new lower secondary school curriculum are confident, can communicate better and can apply the acquired knowledge, skills and attitudes in reaI life situations, according to State Minister for Education and Sports, Peter Ogwang.
Presenting a Statement on the Uganda National Examinations Board [UNEB] grading system under the new curriculum, Ogwang, said that students at the level of education no longer memorise what they have been taught in class to pass examinations.
“It also focuses on measuring practical proficiency and the ability to solve problems rather than simply recalling facts,” he said.
The Minister presented the statement to Parliament presided over by Speaker Anita Among on Thursday.
He said that the shift from the old system of grading to the new system was warranted by the changes in curriculum requirements. The previous system was based on content assessment while the new system is based on competence-based assessment, he said.
The Ministry of Education and Sports rolled out the competence-based curriculum for the lower secondary school level in 2020, presenting a need for assessment reforms that introduced new components of Continuous Assessment [CA] and project work on top of the existing end of cycle examinations, he said.
He said that the new assessment comes with a change in the reporting, grading and certification.
“The UNEB in close consultation with the National Curriculum Development Centre [NCDC], came up with a reporting mechanism that presents a learner’s level of achievement in each subject with a letter grade [A, B, C, D or E]. This was approved by the Ministry of Education and Sports,” he said.
Additionally, he highlighted that the project work is assessed at school and the achievement level, which reveals a learner’s creative competency in dealing with actual and contemporary world problems, presented as a stand-alone on the certificate.
The overall score is constituted by the achievement at school level [20 percent] and end of cycle examination scores [80 percent].
In the grading, the Minister said, learners were awarded A – exceptional; B – outstanding; C – satisfactory; D – basic or E – elementary.
The shadow Minister for Education and Sports, Ssewungu Gonzaga, requested the Speaker to allow the Opposition to respond to the statement on Tuesday next week.
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