Uganda’s government has urged private secondary schools to invest their own resources to fully implement the country’s new ‘hands-on skilling’ lower secondary curriculum, despite persistent challenges facing its rollout.
Speaking on Thursday at the annual dialogue of private secondary school proprietors held at Kabojja International School in Kampala’s Buziga suburb, the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education and Sports, Kedrace Turyagyenda, said private schools must commit to building systems that support effective teaching under the new curriculum.
She said this includes acquiring textbooks and learning materials to enable teachers to deliver the competency-based programme.
‘The government will negotiate with publishers so that they can sell books to you at a manageable rate,’ Turyagyenda said.
Uganda rolled out the new lower secondary curriculum in 2020 through a phased implementation and teacher training programme, shifting away from rote learning toward skills and competencies aimed at producing job-ready graduates.
The curriculum emphasizes practical learning in areas such as information and communication technology and entrepreneurship, with a focus on learner-centered, hands-on education.
However, authorities acknowledge that the reform continues to face major challenges, including insufficient resources, poor infrastructure, limited stakeholder sensitisation and concerns over equity in rural areas.
Despite these constraints, Turyagyenda said progress had been made in training educators, particularly in the private sector.
‘Government has also been training teachers, and that is, one thousand five hundred teachers from private secondary schools have had an opportunity to undertake training,’ she said.
She added that the goal of the training was to equip teachers with skills required to effectively deliver the new curriculum and support the shift toward competency-based learning.
Private school leaders welcomed the call for collaboration, saying the success of the reforms depends on joint efforts between government and private education providers.
The head of high school at Cambridge Kabojja International School-Uganda, Bansal Sandy, said education professionals have a responsibility to support government reforms.
‘We are not on our own. We have to work together, collaborate in education with the government to make Uganda one of the highest education countries,’ she said.
According to official statistics, Uganda has 4,571 secondary schools, of which 67.3 percent are privately owned.
Secondary school enrollment stands at more than two million learners, with about 60 percent studying in government schools.
The dialogue brought together heads and proprietors of private secondary schools from across the country to discuss the implementation of the new curriculum and broader challenges facing secondary education.