KAMPALA, UGANDA: The Minister of Education and Sports, Hon. Janet Museveni is today expected to release the new and revised schools’ calendar to guide the reopening of schools next year, this website has exclusively learnt.
The development comes 7 days after President Museveni in last week’s address to the nation gave a green light to reopen schools starting with tertiary institutions on November 1 while the rest, including secondary, primary, and nursery shall resume classes in January 2022.
According to well-placed sources in the Minister’s office, Mrs. Museveni is to set to issue guidelines to schools as to when they should reopen, how to reopen, which classes to report first, and how long each term will last.
The source revealed that the Minister is also expected to outline dates when candidates in primary seven, senior four, and senior six will sit for their final exams of PLE, UCE, and UACE respectively.
While speaking to the DailyMonitor yesterday in an interview, Mr. Filbert Baguma, the Chairperson of Uganda National Teachers’ Union (UNATU) said they expect the revised school calendar to take care of the time learners have spent out of school.
Baguma says whereas government plans to automatically promote some learners to the next class to reduce congestion, learners should progress to the next class when at least acquainted with the content they did not cover.
He also suggested that the new curriculum should have short holidays for learners since they have already spent a lot of time at home.
The Chairperson of the National Private Educational Institutions Association (NPEIA), Mr. Hasadu Kirabira, on the other hand, said that the new calendar should give schools a fresh year and recognize 2021 as a dead year.
“Since it is a new year and some children have spent a dead year home, we should plan afresh and proceed accordingly without getting confused. 2021 should be killed, and make 2022 a new year, have all students cover all their work and sit for end-of-year exams at the end,” Mr. Hasadu said.
He also said that government should reopen for all learners and not in a phased manner, asserting that some learners can study in the morning while others can be scheduled for afternoon. He also called for the training of teachers on the condensed curriculum before schools are reopened.
Government is in the final stages of completing the condensed curriculum to ensure that only core content is extracted from the current curriculum to form a bridged one.
Do you have a story or an opinion to share? Email us on: [email protected] Or join the Daily Express WhatsApp channel for all the latest news and trends or join the Telegram Channel for the latest updates.
