Teachers in different schools in Kasese district are struggling to decide the content to teach the learners because of the delayed delivery of the abridged curriculum by the Ministry of Education.
Our reporter visited some schools and teachers taking the learners through revisions and content from the home study learning materials as they wait for the ministry to deliver the abridge curriculum. Teachers are expected to prepare schemes of work at the beginning of the term.
However, this year given the fact that learners have been automatically promoted before covering most of the content in their previous classes, the ministry is expected to incorporate some of the uncovered topics into the current academic year.
Several teachers interviewed by URN especially at the primary level were still confused on how to prepare the schemes of work without guidance from the abridged curriculum. They are also concerned that most schools received home study materials three days before re-opening, which means there will remain a huge gap between rural learners and those in urban schools.
Evaleri Bwamable, the deputy school headteacher of Ibanda Primary in Maliba Sub County, says that teachers have failed to have a comprehensive study outline due to the absence of a guiding curriculum. He appeals to the government to expedite the process of orienting teachers on the abridged curriculum so that schooling can resume on a formal course.
Silver Amon Muhindo is the Deputy headteacher of Bigoye primary school. According to Muhindo, they have opted to continue with the old syllabus starting from where they stopped before the lockdown.
He says that many learners in Kasese did not receive the home study materials and if the curriculum is not delivered on time, it means they will lose out on key topics they were supposed to study in the previous class.
Saliveri Mumbere, the Director of Studies at St. Mark Memorial Nursery and Primary also says they are still using the previous curriculum. He, however, is confident that the teachers will be flexible in implementing the abridged curriculum since they acquired training.
Alex Baluku, the headteacher of Nkaiga Primary school notes that delayed the delivery of the curriculum is going to create chaos as individual schools will come up with an effective way of teaching the learners.
Edwin Bwambale, a teacher at Izinga SDA Primary School notes that schools cannot operate fully with the old curriculum when the ministry promised a new one. At Maliba Maliba Secondary School the headteacher, Alexander Bwambale, says that teachers are doing some recaps on the previous topics.
Recently, Dr. Denis Mugimba, the spokesperson of the education ministry revealed that NCDC had suffered budget cuts but insisted that the agency still had money to roll out the abridged curriculum. Under the abridged curriculum, some repeated topics have been scrapped, others merged with teachers required to focus on selected competencies.
Many topics in subjects like mathematics have been omitted.
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