The Head of State House Investors Protection Unit (SHIPU), Col. Edith Nakalema has today held a fruitful meeting with the leadership of the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC).
NCDC is a corporate autonomous statutory institution under the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoE&S) responsible for the development of educational curricula for Pre-primary, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary institutions in Uganda.
During a high-level meeting held at the unit’s offices in Kampala, Col. Nakalema called for skills development at every level of human development.
“Can we have our children from primary to do something that they are interested in? When we develop these children in the line they what, of course we shall have positive results,” she said.
“We should not stop at only skill anticipation, we should also implement these skills. We should develop the skills until they are implemented. Look at the skill of the children/learners and develop it with knowledge.”
Col. Nakalema also called upon Ugandans to ensure character building in order to deal with the challenge of moral decadence in the country.
She said moral decadence starts from homes and schools because parents and teachers no longer care about character building among the young ones.
“Nowadays education is all about cram work, no skills, and you wonder what kind of generation we have now.”
The Director of NCDC, Dr. Grace K. Baguma underscored the role of skills and values in socio-economic transformation.
She said skills such as communication, problem solving are key in promoting investments and development at large.
She noted that the persistent gap between the skills demanded by the labour market and those available with the workforce, is still a big challenge.
Dr. Baguma therefore called for the critical need for investment in education, skill development and employment creation.
“The mismatch burdens individuals, businesses, and government sectors leading to chronic structural unemployment and underdevelopment,” the Director said.
She further revealed that the new education curriculum is aimed at promoting skills at the basic levels of education.
“Under NCDC, we have the Skills Need Anticipation Committee (SNAC) which was tasked to develop a concept note for the anticipated skills strata for curriculum development for the next 20 years in the world of work,” Dr. Baguma revealed.
“We have received some feedback from parents that with the new lower curriculum, they have started to see an attitude change among learners.”
Dr. Baguma however expressed concern over Uganda’s lagging behind in the region when it comes to communication and problem solving skills.
“Problem solving as a skill, Uganda is not scoring. We should begin from the stage when the mother conceives and then throughout the education system.”
“We want a holistic approach to deal with the issue. In our new curriculum, we emphasize character formation whereby we groom people to be ethical and know that they should not touch anything which doesn’t belong to them. Being a good person you must have the etiquettes of good character.”
On the other hand, Dr. Baguma proposed a partnership between NCDC and SHIPU with regard to guiding on skills anticipation for Uganda, a request Col. Nakalema responded to in the affirmative.
Dr. Bruce Kirenga, Principal of College of Health Sciences at Makerere University, tasked NCDC to engage all stakeholders to ensure that the skills development initiative benefits all Ugandans.
He also advised the centre to fuse knowledge with skills for more gains.
“The talent and skills should not go alone, it should go with knowledge if you are to get results. Create a curriculum where every child is excellent in some field. Despite having skills, let’s ensure that learners are knowledgeable. The knowledge, when commercialised, can promote the economy,” Dr. Kirenga stated.
“Writing a guideline is a product itself.”
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