The Directorate of Industrial Training –DIT has started allocating assessment center numbers to all secondary schools.
This is in line with the new lower secondary curriculum that was introduced by the government in 2020 for skills development.
The pre-vocational subjects are summarized under eight including Information and Communication Technology, Entrepreneurship, Agriculture, Art and Design, Technology and Design, Nutrition and Technology, Physical Education.
DIT as an assessment body is mandated to carry out assessment and accreditation of the learners as concerns the skills for the world of work.
Patrick Byakatonda, the Executive Director of DIT says that the assessment process of the pioneer students requires all schools to have a DIT assessment centre number after fulfilling the requirements.
A school to qualify for a DIT assessment centre number should be registered with the Ministry of Education ad Sports, have a Uganda National Examination Board-UNEB center number, have more than five students, and facilities for the occupation practicals and trainers among others.
The school will also be mandated to pay 350,000 Shillings as a registration fee for the centre number. However, this fee does not apply to Universal Secondary schools.
Byakatonda says that for each learner to be assessed under this program they have to pay 80,000 Shillings.
Learners will at the end receive two certificates including the Uganda Certificate of Education-UCE and the level one competency certificate for the Uganda Vocational Qualification Framework.
At this stage, the learner will have a choice of progressing to the next level of education to get a level two certificate in the competence field.
Byakatonda explains that schools are expected to be helping learners to come up with projects under this curriculum, saying they will be the starting point in the assessment process.
Students are supposed to do group projects in their chosen vocational subjects like a plantation for those doing agriculture and 22 players for the footballers who are also expected to have certificates or trophies to show prior to learning.
Although the assessment process is getting closer, some schools are still struggling to teach the learners in this new curriculum with some focusing on recovering the theory content while some lack resources to implement it, especially for the vocational subjects requiring extra infrastructure.
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