By Kitts D.Mabonga
KAMPALA
Education experts have urged the government to review its recently approved automatic student promotion policy saying it might have future consequences for the learners.
The remarks were made by a senior education expert, Katwesigye Godfrey during an interview over the impact of the recently released UNEB PLE results.
He advised that it was not proper for the government to come up with the automatic pupil promotion policy under the new curriculum without critically undertaking extensive orientation for the teachers who are the curriculum implementers.
‘We need to be reminded that the new curriculum came at a time when all schools had been closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak and almost all the schools had lost their entire infrastructure not forgetting both the teachers and learners swiftly got exposed to a completely new different lifestyle outside the education system environment’ he pointed out.
He noted that it was important for stakeholders include the ministry of Education and Sports to work jointly with National curriculum development Center (NCDC) and the teachers’ professional bodies to review this policy such that learners are not just pushed into the next class automatically but must be subjected to testing and proven on merit if quality was to be emphasized.
He said rules of natural justice can dictate that every child’s excelling in class must strictly be measured or tested by his or her learning ability including exposure to the art of thinking, reasoning and be able to make independent informed decisions at that particular level before moving to the next class given that there are exclusive basics which such children must not miss as they upgrade to the next class.
He observed that the reasons why many candidates failed was due to the new curriculum which the learners had not effectively embraced ever since it was launched and at the sometime the teachers were also not officially oriented to understand its basic principles or simply both the learners and teachers were carelessly left by the ship captain to drown into waters they had not been amicably earlier exposed to
Katwesigye says in order to curb this escalating gap of challenges between teachers, learners and curriculum, it was important for the government to effectively send all teachers for refresher courses with a mission to enable them fully understand it for better output.
Other experts said since government phased out over 20 PTCs it might have been a blunt mistake given that they play a key role orienting teachers about the new developments