What education experts think of UCE reports

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 .