How Ugandan learners are getting an education during the lockdown

Education, formal or informal is every child’s right but the outbreak of the COVID19 pandemic has only made this statement a myth due to the lockdown.

Since March 20th, 2020, schools and public gathering places have been forced to close to contain the spread of the pandemic. This has sent 15,100,000 learners and 548,000 teachers on a “forced holiday”.

At the best of times, Ugandan learners especially in rural areas do not receive the same quality of education like their urban counterparts. Many of their schools lack resources. While learners from better resourced attempt online learning, rural schools lack of internet connectivity, supportive parents, books and other scholastic materials making school dropouts and teenage pregnancies inevitable in the long run.

The process of the reopening schools might be gradual as authorities will want to reduce the agglomeration, or the possibility of the second wave of the pandemic as they also devise means on how the education system can recover stronger.

Fortunately we are seeing a lot of creativity as the Ministry of Education alongside other organizations such as UNHCR and UNICEF look for appropriate and inclusive strategies to avail education continuity to learners country wide using the available infrastructure.

1. UNICEF through the Ministry of Education has provided US$800,000 (SHS.2.9B) to print and transport learning material developed by the National Curriculum Development Center (NCDC) to 48 districts with low education indicators, 13 of which host refugees. This will therefore to an extent provide education continuity to these learners and help them cope with their respective syllabi when the schools reopen.

Additionally, UNICEF will continue to support these districts in making use of local radios and community-based communication channels and structures to support these learners and parents make effective use of these distance-learning tools. 

3. The ministry of education also published the COVID19 Education sector response guidelines on their website and other different online resources to help students with internet connectivity self-study. These resources majorly cater for primary and secondary school learners with pdf self-study documents that can be downloaded or printed. This self-study learning material will help learners boost their confidence, encourage curiosity and allow them study at their own pace by focusing on arrears they are most interested in. 
4. Radios, newspapers, social media and television channels have also been a very powerful tool. The advantage we have today is that through social media tools such as Whatsapp, very many schools have been able to reach out to their students by creating WhatsApp groups for example Mengo Senior School teachers created Whatsapp groups and added students’ or their parents’ telephone numbers. This has enabled the teachers send pdf notes to revise, sample examination tests to be done as well as holding online discussions about various learners’ topics.

Additionally, teachers are also conducting classroom-like lessons on TVs and radios where lessons are aired for 30-40 minutes and 1 hour for lower and upper primary learners respectively.  These lessons focus on themes and key competences that are deemed critical for these learners at a particular level in a given subject, as stipulated in the curriculum.

To ensure that the content aired is viable, the ministry has also appointed an officer to prepare the teachers particularly for lessons aired on UBC radio and UBC TV.

Conclusively, as the Ministry of Education plans to reopen schools and other learning institutions, it has to take this opportunity to build back a better education system, recognizing the vital importance of inclusivity to end learners’ inequalities in their education lifecycle.

The author can be contacted at macleanatuhaire@gmail.com