MPs pretending about New Lower Secondary School Curriculum – NCDC

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The National Curriculum Development Centre has said that Members of Parliament who claim that they were not consulted before the new lower secondary curriculum was approved, are not telling the truth.

Speaking to journalists at the Uganda Media Centre in Kampala yesterday, Grace Baguma, the Executive Director of the National Curriculum Development Centre said that through the Education Committee, they have interacted with MPs throughout the process.

She added that it’s unfortunate that some MPs can now turn around and claim that they were not aware of the process, and their colleagues on the education committee were unable to explain that they were consulted.

“Our budget had been cut and they said these people are reviewing the curriculum they added us 3 billion Shillings. Why did they give us the money if they didn’t know what we were doing? Let’s be fair to the children of Uganda and our education system,” she said.

Last week parliament adopted a motion moved by Budadiri West Member of Parliament Nathan Nandala Mafabi halting the rollout of the new curriculum citing ill-preparedness by the Ministry of Education. The MPs said the teachers who were supposed to implement the new curriculum didn’t have the competency to undertake the tasks because of a lack of training.

But Baguma says that so far they have trained 20,000 teachers from across the country and are ready to kick-start the new program. She added that they have requested for 143 billion Shillings to facilitate them to continue with the training for the next five years.

Baguma further clarified that despite the objections from parliament, they were going ahead with the implementation of the curriculum as per their schedule starting with senior one this year.

“We have three arms of government, the Executive, the Judiciary and Legislature. We belong to the executive which is governed by the cabinet. Parliament’s role is advisory and we have taken their advice but we shall go ahead with the implementation of the curriculum,” Baguma said.

Her deputy Dr Bernadette Nambi Karuhanga also disputed the claim that NCDC is only talking about the curriculum now after parliament raised concerns about it.

She said that the draft of the curriculum was taken to different levels. “We have interfaced with the public on talk shows and in print media. It’s wrong for someone to say that we are only coming out after the concerns of parliament,” Nambi said.

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