By Frank Kamuntu
Prof Lawrence Muganga appearing on NBS TV ‘Morning Breeze’ show on Tuesday morning re-echoed the need for an overhaul of the current education system if the country is to have resourceful citizens in the future.
Muganga a Ugandan-Canadian scholar, digital economy educationist, and academic administrator who serves as the Vice Chancellor of Victoria University says the current education system which was drafted by the colonialists in ancient times only prepares children to fail since it doesn’t equip them with skills but cram work.
”The current system only tells our children cram these texts when the time for exams comes write them on paper and you get first grades, and the same system will help schools that get huge first grades to extort our poor parents because our parents have been told that a better school is that which registers huge first grades,” said Muganga.
Further, the educationist wants Primary Seven exams thrown in the nearby dustbin,” examinations should be limited to the high school level (A’level), while lower levels of education should rely on continuous assessments conducted by schools. It’s unfair to label young learners as unable to cram for exam success throughout their education. Consider the plight of those students who can’t reproduce what they have crammed during national examinations. What will become of them? Let us scrap PLE examinations!”
Muganga the author of the popular books; You Can’t Make Fish Climb Trees and “Authentic University”, also doesn’t find it necessary for learners to be assessed at the national level by the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB).
He says learners should be assessed by their teachers at the school level and if UNEB is still interested in knowing how these learners performed can only get results from the teachers who understand very well these learners.
”It’s unfair to pick learners from deeper villages of Karamoja and give them the same exam as those from Kololo here in Kampala. The environments totally differ. Let’s trust our teachers, and let these learners be assessed by those who teach them because they understand them well and know all they go through to get to class every morning. That way we shall be dealing with quality education, not quantity education which focuses on a number of first grades!” noted Muganga.
He asked the Ugandan Education Review Commission (ERC) and National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) to pick a leaf from modern education systems in the US, Canada and others that focus on children’s skills and competence, not D1s and first grades.
He cautioned parents, ”If the school is not giving your child a skill but only focuses on first grades, then drop that school, jump out of that scam. You find a child is asked to change uniforms every day, today it’s red, tomorrow it’s green the other day it’s white…I mean, how does this really contribute to the quality education you are promising our parents, it’s a broad-day extortion that our parents and government should not tolerate.”
