KAMPALA – The Minister of Education and Sports Janet Museveni has taken a swipe at teachers whom she accused of encouraging cram work and misleading novices with complicated words –a practice she said is not helping students.
The cram work practice, she claimed is very common in the English language.
“The teaching of the English language has degenerated to encouraging learners to cram content that consists of very complicated words,” she said ordering them to stop it.
“Students today use highly sounding words to impress, some of them don’t even know the meanings. All these are aimed at making learners pass without making them understand. It is not helping our students,” Mrs Museveni said adding that “this needs to stop as it is not helping our students.”
This was after Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) Executive Secretary Mr. Daniel Odongo said revealed that n creative composition, candidates crammed and reproduced passages irrespective of the question they were answering and used inappropriate vocabulary, words they themselves did not understand
He said the failure of such subjects clearly indicates that teachers are not training students on how to handle and interpret questions, but rather just helping them pass without getting the real concept.
“By the time you fail English then how will you interpret questions in other subjects,” Mr. Odongo.
“Females have performed better than Males in the English language. This has always happened over the years. However, the boys manage to make their way around in other subjects and beat the girls,” he added.
According to the UNEB report, the overall improvement in performance can be seen in Biology, Geography, Agriculture, and Chemistry and Art. English Language, History and Commerce had a significant drop.
The minister also implored teachers to ensure that learners assess all the learning in the curriculum saying the entire programme and co-curricular activities are meant to develop the learners in a holistic manner.
Malpractice at UCE2019 level has significantly reduced. We should recognise UNEB’s efforts in making this happen. It should be viewed as a way of fighting corruption – Janet Museveni, Education Minister
