The ministry of Education has stopped the Directorate of Industrial Training assessment component under the new lower secondary curriculum following litany of implementation flaws according to our media.
However some of the sources familiar with this process told our media that the decision was taken on Monday following a meeting at the State House Entebbe chaired by the line minister Ms Museveni.
The meeting was attended by several bureaucrats and top officials of DIT.
The government revised the lower secondary curriculum and began implementing the new one in 2020 to make each student graduate at every education level with employable skills for the world of work.
The permanent secretary in the Education ministry Ms Ketty Lamaro who was yesterday reported out of the country and unable to comment on the matter is expected to issue a circular on the partial curriculum implementation suspension anytime this week.
Meanwhile two officials from ministry of education who commented on condition of anonymity for lack of authority to speak on the matter said the freeze followed a litany of complaints by teachers across the country that they didn’t understand the teaching required for DIT skills transfer and evaluation.
Some of the teachers told bureaucrats that whereas up to 118 courses were outlined for a student to choose one for technical skills development they know neither the specific content nor how to teach it.
Furthermore it also emerged that many in service teachers without refresher trainings lacked the requisite knowledge in the hands on subjects while no new skilled counterparts were hired to bridge the gap.
There was also a complaint about the cost of teaching the hands on subjects linked to either inadequate or lacking instructional materials charges such as the Shs 80,000 that schools imposed per student for DIT class.
The Shs 80,000 fee is an additional to Shs 164,000 a DIT student is meant to pay in senior four before taking a Uganda Certificate of Education( UCE)examination.
“ Making learners pay a separate fee of Shs 80,000 for DIT was a double fee according to the ministry’s top officials and most parents weren’t going to afford it,”
In addition it was also emerged that the cost of teaching these programmes was also high for schools so the ministry of Education decided to suspend it indefinitely.
The suspension comes amidst the third year of the implementation of the curriculum whose pioneer students are set to submit the project work to DIT for assessment this November ahead of their final Uganda Certificate of Education examination next year.
Following the revised curriculum every student is to graduate with two certificates one issued by DIT for the vocational subject which would make them employable and the other issued by the Uganda National Examination Board as proof of one’s academic competence.
The decision to suspend the vocation competence assessment means learners in the pioneer cohort will not get the competence Certification of level 1 on the Uganda Vocational Qualifications Framework by DIT making them unable to be evaluated for hands on skills in A level.
According to the chairperson of the National Private Education Institution Association Mr Hasadu Kirabira said many private schools never registered their learners for DIT assessments because they lacked facilities needed for the training and according to him there were no training manuals and text books from DIT to guide schools on what content to give to learners under vocational training.
Following an interview with the deputy director for Research , Consultancy and Library Services at the National Curriculum Development Centre Dr Richard Irumba said the suspension will not affect the other competence training and learning outcomes of the curriculum.