As schools wait for hardcopy (printed) Learners Text Books and Teachers Guides based on the New Curriculum being distributed by the National Curriculum Development Center, Soft copies of the prototypes have been shared with the public for the mean time.
Cabinet this week cleared the Ministry of Education to continue with the implementation of the revised lower secondary curriculum after the minister informed Cabinet that they were ready to begin and they would handle whatever challenges come along the way. The Education Minister is also going to address Parliament on the New Curriculum.
On the issue of textbooks, the ministry said the syllabus for the compulsory subjects had already been distributed to both private and government schools. They said National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) was using prototypes to train teachers.
At the release, Ms Kakooza told The Daily Monitor that the final textbooks would be ready in July. He acknowledged that while they needed Shs70 billion for the first phase, they have so far received Shs10.3 billion.
“… we have gone ahead and improvised and got exemplars which we have distributed to all government and private schools in order for them to begin. The Shs10.3 billion which we have got for these activities will take us through the first phase. We expect to get more money in the next quarter. We are ready to proceed,” Mr Kakooza said.
In another Daily Monitor report, Ms Grace Baguma, the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) executive director, said they had prepared to distribute materials for the revised curriculum to about 4,000 secondary schools only to discover that there were more than 4,000 others.
“We are continuing to distribute materials. The copies may not be enough. We have been thinking of 4,000 but it looks like we will have to print more. When we went in the field, it seems there are more than 8,000 schools,” Ms Baguma said in a media interview.
She urged those who will not get the books to download the material from the NCDC website.
“Let us use technology. Some of the materials will be put on our portal,” Ms Baguma said.
There have been setbacks to implement the curriculum whose review started 12 years ago. The latest was last week when Parliament voted to suspend its implementation on claims that teachers had not been trained and there were no materials in schools to aid the teaching and learning.
The government requested to be allowed to continue with the curriculum and correct the gaps along the way.
Education minister Janet Museveni presented their curriculum review journey before Cabinet on Monday and was called to proceed with the implementation.
Advice
Mr Alex Kakooza, the ministry’s permanent secretary, confirmed that there are more schools than they had planned for but asked those which will not get to improvise. Other NCDC officials have been giving more advice to the public through several television shows this week:
Download Links
Yesterday, NCDC Officials shared with several teacher networks some of the books through this first Google Drive Link and this Second one.
We have also uploading reduced-file-size versions on this website for simpler access. Also check out on the New Sharebility.net where the syllabus books them selves and other resources are being uploaded.
As ICT Teachers, we are encouraged to download these teaching and learning resources and share with other subject teachers and our school administrators so that we can utilize them as we embrace the new competence based curriculum.
…More still uploading, check back in a few minutes…
