The Economic Policy Research Centre has kicked off the second phase of the Youth Employment and Skills (YES) Pan-African Coalition for Transformation (PACT) programme with a focus on helping in-service teachers implement the new lower-secondary school curriculum.
YES PACT platform brings together high-level policymakers and stakeholders concerned with policy development and implementation around issues of youth employment, skills development, education, and the labor market.
The programme is funded by the Mastercard Foundation through The African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET) Ghana as the overall coordinating institution.
For the Ugandan chapter, in-service teachers were chosen after long reflection and realization that majority of them had not received necessary preparation to teach the competency-based curriculum for lower secondary, according to Madina Guloba, a senior research fellow at EPRC.
Sarah N. Ssewanyana, EPRC Executive Director, said she hopes “this will help us in terms of filling some of the gaps [as well as] ways to go forward. The programme is cross-country, and I do hope that we shall be able to pick lessons from other countries since this is about knowledge sharing as well as experience.”
Mr Alfred Kyaka, the assistant commissioner secondary education, at Ministry of Education Uganda during the inception meeting.
Through the first phase of this programme, the EPRC and chapter champions looked at the challenges that are faced by all teachers in implementation of the new curriculum for lower secondary. The second phase is an extension and further investigation and advocacy of the issues identified in the first phase.
Gilbert Siima, the curriculum specialist ICT at National Curriculum Development Center (NCDC), and the chair of the Uganda YES PACT chapter, said most teachers, if not all of them, even those receiving training now were prepared to give a teacher-centered curriculum.
Yet, he added, they are expected to deliver student-centered curriculum whereby learners identify a problem in the community and find a solution for it.
“Because a lot has changed, our teachers everywhere need a lot of support even [in basic things] like having their capacity improved to conduct a learner centered lesson.”
The second phase of the programme will involve a survey of different schools, a report and stakeholders’ engagement to forge way forward to assist in-service teachers.