What
education experts think of UCE reports
KAMPALA.
Education expert have weighed in on the just released UCE results, many
attributing the declined performance, particularly of traditional schools
on drilling students to pass exams rather than offering holistic education
which involves co-curricular activities and imparting good morals.
The
experts argue that many schools today no longer teach students to understand
the real concepts in subjects but only prepare them to simply pass
examinations .They say, a few that have managed to stay on top over the years,
have strong old students and parents associations that help to track
performance of candidates and monitor general operations of the schools.
“Liberation
of education was done but it came with challenges that stakeholders need to
address rather than paying a deaf ear,” says Mr Isa Matovu ,an education
analyst .
“We
need to rethink and redesign our education system and people
must know that passing exams is not the only benchmark to assess whether
a learner has attained the required competences or not .There should be
continuous assessments but many schools no longer consider this ,” he
adds
Mr Matovu says some schools
also have an edge of others because they have invested heavily in motivating
their teachers as well as putting up necessary facilities like well stocked
libraries and science laboratories.
“If
teachers can spend months without pay, what results can they produce? . Their
colleagues in private schools rarely face such challenges because the
institutions they serve have the financial capacity to give them incentives,”
he says
The school ranking done by this newspaper showed that many
traditional schools have almost sunk into oblivion, with new private schools
dominating the list of the 50 best-performing schools .This ranking was based
on each school’s performance in Division One, in comparison to the total number
of candidates, who sat exams at the school in 2013.
Uneb
executive secretary, Mathew Bukenya also raised the same concerns during the
release of the results Tuesday , saying for the case of English subject , many
teachers encourage students to cram passages and reproduce the same
irrelevantly in answering English composition questions.
“
There is evidence that the use of prescribed text books in teaching are being
avoided by many teachers in preference to the pamphlets and during practical
tests , many looked like they were seeing the equipment for the first
time considering the way they were handling them ,” he said
Mr Patrick Kaboyo ,the executive director the Coalition
of Uganda Private School Teachers
Association says government’s indecision about offering attractive incentives to
teachers, lack of precision and focus on a defined quality assurance framework
for all secondary schools are the major reasons why performance of many
public institutions has declined . “Overall, we have harvested failures because
we chose to ignore the teachers demands during the strike and more failures
should be expected if the status quo remains,” he says
However
, he concurs with Mr Bukenya that many teachers ,especially those handling
science subjects still find difficulties in passing on the knowledge to the
learners . “Practical teaching of science must begin right from kindergarten
and not secondary school. Even us, the teachers need to vary our pedagorical approach
[methods of teaching facts and knowledge to learners as a way of promoting
science education]”.he says
An analysis of results
shows that performance of private schools was relatively better than public schools,
including those not implementing free education programme. A total of
1,194 schools countrywide fell below the 50 per cent mark ranked on the basis
of Division One scores. 384 registered a single percentage point while 1,036
schools failed to get a single Division One student.
For example , out of the
241 candidates at Mary Hill High School ,none got eight aggregates in best done
eight subjects as the best had 14 aggregates while at Ntare School ,their
best candidate had 10 aggregates .The situation was no different at King’s
College ,Budo where only two candidates ,out of 257 candidates managed to score
8 aggregates .But at London College of St Lawrence, which is private, all
the 55 (100 percent)candidates passed in Division
One and at St. Mary’s Kitende ,out of the 421 who sat, 408 passed
in Division One .The same impressive results were recorded at Merry land High
School, Entebbe where out of the 88 candidates who sat ,84 passed
in Division One . But Mr Erisam Kanyerezi , the director of studies at King’s
College,Budo says he has been tracking performance of O’level candidates
in traditional schools over the past decade and their performance has not
been good compared to new private schools. Mr Kanyerezi, who also doubles as a
senior Uneb examiner attributes the problem to many subjects offered at
lower secondary .
“
Unlike primary or advanced level where candidates study a few subjects, at
lower secondary there are many subjects and students usually find it had to
balance them,” he says , adding “ But our experience has shown that
when they move to Senior Five ,they score higher grades and many usually scoop
government scholarships at university .”
Government
is currently reviewing the curriculum at lower secondary that will see subjects
scrapped and replaced with seven ‘learning areas’ .These include; technology and enterprise, creative arts, mathematics, science,
languages, social studies and life education. Students will also get generic
skills to test among others; their problem-solving and decision –making
abilities, communication, social, inter-personal and investigative skills.
Currently,
32 subjects are offered at O-Level but students can make a choice of up to
eight or ten
But
Matovu says reviewing of the curriculum for O’level is long overdue ,adding
that it is overload, outdated and does not adequately address contemporary
demands of the job market.
For
instance, he adds, students during physics lessons are taught about
vacuum tubes, yet the technology has since been phased out in electronics. In
Geography lessons, the students are still learning about the Tennessee Valley
Authority in its form of 1980s .
“
The designers of the revised curriculum must try and reduce the
width and scope of the learning areas to allow the students understand
the concepts taught rather than crapping like it is today ,” he says However
, the fears that the curriculum may not be implemented to the letter because of
inadequate availability of competent teachers to pass on the required skills to
the learners . A decade after Uganda acquired independence , government then
changed the science syllabus from the traditional one to a new system called
School Science Project( SSP). The intention then, as today, was that SSP was
more practical .SSP covered biology ,physics and chemistry but the project
collapsed in most schools because there were no adequately trained
teachers. The government of the day(1971-79) failed to adquently
equip schools with the necessary laboratory equipment from several schools
reverted t the old syllabus
Of
the 289012 candidates who sat, 261438 passed in Division One to Division Four .
A total of 50,549 candidates completely failed the exams and will not get
certificate .
