Gov’t launches new secondary school inspection system

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT  |  The Ministry of Education has launched a new Secondary school inspection system to improve the quality of education. 

It was launched on Thursday at State House Entebbe by the Minister of Education and Sports.

The new system was piloted in 2017 in Masaka in 40 schools and currently, it is being rolled out in 1,000 schools in six districts in the country.

As part of the new methodology, two school inspectors will be required to carry out inspections in a school unlike currently where only one inspector visits several schools. 

Dr Kedrace Turyagenda, the Director of Education Standards in the Ministry of Education, says that school inspections that were carried out before were ineffective because inspectors did not have enough time to properly inspect the schools.

“Before one teacher would visit two schools in a day they would end up focusing on the basic requirements like number of toilet stanzas instead of what is happening in the classroom,” Dr Turyagenda said.

She added, “With the new system, two teachers will have to spend a day in a school and attend a total of 8 lessons in the school in addition to checking in certain things.”

The new system will also focus on assessing; attendance of teachers, attendance of learners, quality of teaching, learning achievements, behaviour of learners, safety of learners and quality of leadership in schools.

Kule Benson Baritazale, the Commissioner for Secondary School Education Standards says that the new methodology will ensure that proper inspection takes place in schools.

“With the new method, inspectors will need to interview other stakeholders in schools. They will have to talk to learners, cooks, members of school management committees and even boards of governors. Before they used to just talk to headteachers,” Baritazale said. 

In addition to the above, school inspectors will have to produce reports that will be shared with heads of schools at the end of each visit. 

The Minister of Education, Janet Kataha Museveni says that the new methodology is going to improve on the quality of education in the country. 

“We introduced Universal Primary Education and Universal Secondary Education but the quality was failing. We have been carrying out inspections but the quality was still lacking.

Inspections focussed on what happens outside the classroom and ignored the place where teaching takes place to see what was wrong,” Mrs Museveni said. 

The methodology was developed by the Ark Education Partnerships Group- an international UK based Education NGO. It will be funded by the Department for International Development-DFID for five years.

It is going to be rolled out in all other districts starting next month.

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