Parliament on Tuesday night suspended the newly launched O’level curriculum after a motion moved by Hon Nandala Mafabi was supported by the entire House.

Parliament cited limited consultations done before rolling it out, numbers of days set aside to train teachers and the fact that there was no budget for its implementation as some of the reasons as to why the implementation was suspended.

Led by Joseph Ssewungu, a section of MPs had earlier claimed that the implementation of the curriculum is not budgeted for in the 2020/2021 budget.

The same curriculum had earlier been approved by the Cabinet, something that has since left school owners and stakeholders in the education sector confused on what development to implement.

The new curriculum was to see the teaching subjects reduced from 43 to 21 among many other things.

Grace Baguma, the executive director of the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) told Daily Monitor days back that the subject content was reduced by getting rid of obsolete knowledge and integrating related knowledge depending on relevance, societal needs and national goals.

Under the new curriculum also, teachers are to compile the learners’ achievements under the formative assessment in the four-year cycle, find an average score and submit it to the Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) to contribute at least 20 per cent in the final national examinations grading.

The approved curriculum if finally taken up will see a school teach 12 subjects at Senior one and two, of which 11 will be compulsory while one will be from an elective menu (optional).

Students at levels three and four (Senior 3 and 4) will exit with a minimum of eight or maximum of nine subjects, with seven of them compulsory.

This comes at a time when the first term of 2020 has officially kicked off in a number of primary and secondary schools across the country.

Details to follow…