The Government of Uganda through Ministry of Education and Sports has contracted MS Elite Publishers Limited, one of the several publishing companies whose books were evaluated by both Ministry of Education and NCDC, for conformity to the needs of the New Competence Based Curriculum(CBC). ICT Textbooks by Elite Publishers emerged the best from the evaluation process and were approved to be used as instructional textbooks to guide classroom teaching and learning activities for Senior One and Senior Two.
Mercy Timbitwire, the author and the Managing Director of Elite Publishers limited says that the Government has procured copies for all the 5502 secondary schools (both private and government) to enhance the importance of ICT as a subject that every school should embrace. It should be noted that in the new curriculum, use of ICT is integral across all the subjects. Learners without ICT skills will find difficulty in approaching other studies. Therefore, schools should ensure that learners acquire ICT skills and one main way of doing it is pursuing ICT as a subject.
Elite Publishers however notices that the copies that government has procured are not enough. In the new curriculum, the ratio of learners to a textbook is recommended as 1:1. However, with the government copies, in some schools, it will be 1:8 which depicts a huge gap that might hamper the acquisition of knowledge as well as application. Therefore schools, organisations, sponsors, guardians and parents are urged to join hands and procure more books to bridge the gap for the betterment of the future generation in this ICT era. One way of encouraging parents, partners, sponsors, guardians and learners to acquire the textbooks is by listing them as recommended in school circulars.
Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
Responding to questions by members of ITAU WhatsApp groups, Mercy gave the following responses
- Prototypes VS Textbooks.
Prototypes were produced by NCDC mainly to guide the publishers on how to write for the new Curriculum. They were also used to stop the gap as textbooks were getting ready. As you might have seen, the prototypes were not complete.
I encourage you to now go for the textbooks not only ICT but also other subjects. I can be of great help in letting you know which publisher won which subject. - Where are ICT government books?
The distribution process for the same is commencing next week and will take 3 weeks. I can assure you that every listed school will get copies although a few. - How come you only have ICT textbooks?
When a call for bids is put out by government, each publisher chooses the subjects they love to write.
This whole process is so daunting and competitive. In the end winners are announced after the evaluation of books by NCDC and govt.
A publisher can win two subjects and fail in the others. More so, a publisher can win S.1 Biology and fail S.2 Biology for example.
In Elite Publishers’ case, we were the best in ICT S.1- S4, Biology S.3-4, Performing Arts and General Science. Other subjects have other winners. So your school will have a variety of publishers each distributing the subjects they won. At a later stage, more publishers will get on board after improving their books which did make it from the first evaluation. It is therefore important that you know which Publisher won what such that you buy approved books.
4. Can we get the books in softcopy just like the NCDC prototypes?
At the beginning (in 2020) provisional prototypes were made by NCDC using government funding, and shared publicly in softcopy. But this time, the books are made by the private sector and government is actually also just purchasing some hardcopies from the respective publishers who have invested own resources to develop standard quality textbooks which conform to the new curriculum guidelines.
This is why they can’t be in softcopy this time round.
Elite Publishers contacts are 0702771512 and 0782952095 for more inquiries and special orders for books.
