Government urged to adopt accelerated learning for teenage mothers

Government has been urged to review and adopt accelerated learning for the teenage mothers to help them catch up to the mainstream education system at the secondary level.

The remarks were made as Oxfam Uganda and its implementing partners wound up the Building Resilience Through Crisis Education Project(BRiCE) meant to help refugees who had outgrown formal primary education.

This project was piloted at Palabek refugee settlement in Lamwo district to offer an exclusively designed education strategy to refugees and host communities to help them catch up with the mainstream education system at the secondary level.

Oxfam has been implementing the project aimed at building sustainable, resilient, and quality educational opportunities for children in Palabek refugee settlement, Lamwo district.

Speaking to the media in Kampala, the state minister of Gender in charge of Disability, Hellen Grace Asamo, highlighted the need for providing quality education to the refugees and disadvantaged children in the host communities.

"I am asking Oxfam to share lessons learnt from the BRiCE project as they will be useful in harnessing government existing efforts to uplift the wellbeing of our people in Lamwo district," said Asamo.

Francis Shanty Odokorach, the country director Oxfam Uganda said the accelerated education encourages learners, especially teenage mothers, to transition to other education levels.

He said that this learning programme is flexible, age-appropriate, run in an accelerated time frame, which aims to provide access to certified education for disadvantaged, over-age, out-of-school children, and adolescents – particularly those who missed out on, or had their education interrupted due to poverty, marginalisation, conflict and crisis.

"From this project, we have proved that accelerated education can surely provide equivalent quality educational outcomes to disadvantaged groups who missed out on, or had their education interrupted due to various vulnerabilities," he said.

Odokorach called for increased budget allocation to the key sectors of education, health, and other sectors that reduce the burden of care on women.