Education Ministry To Supply Learning Materials To Students At Home

The Ministry of Education and Sports has developed learning materials to distribute to the school going children who are currently at home over the COVID19 shut down.

The ministry early this month had projected that schools would reopen for the first term on 27th April.

This however became impossible after President Museveni on April 14th extended the Covid19 lockdown for 21 more days.

Last evening, the Education Minister Mrs Janet Museveni said her Ministry will supply learning materials to students and pupils who are at home and cannot access learning materials since schools are closed.

“The Ministry has produced a framework to guide the process of continuity of learning. We have also identified the basic competencies or concepts to study and harmonize learning packages or materials for use in continuity of learning while learners are still at home, and prepared guidelines for Local Governments to ensure effective learning,” she said.

The materials, she added, will be an addition to those that will delivered on radios, televisions and online and will focus on primary one to primary seven (P1 to P7) and secondary level.

“Self-study print materials from P1 to P7 have also been developed and will be distributed to learners. The Ministry will hand these materials to the district leadership led by the RDC (Resident District Commissioner) and the CAO (Chief Administrative Officer) said Mrs Museveni.

The RDCs and CAOs will distribute the materials to the sub county chiefs who in turn will hand them over to the parish chiefs and parish chiefs will use the LC1s to hand them over the individual homes.

 

Mrs Museveni called on district leadership to assist in the process of distributing learning materials.

“This is the system I believe can work especially where the district leadership are active and can monitor this program so that it can go all the way down to individual homes so that children do not have to run around the district looking for these materials. So, I appeal to Local Government leadership to help us do this and use the system that is already there, get in touch with the sub county chiefs who are facilitated to do programs of COVID 19 and in turn get in touch with parish chiefs and then go down to LC1s who will hand these materials to the homes.”

Proper records she said will be kept at every level to be sure that the sent out materials got to the beneficiaries (children in homes).

“That is the purpose especially those families who cannot access work online or TVs or even radios. Those are the ones we hope will not fail to access these materials. These materials will be a great resource to our learners even after the lockdown,” she said.

The continuation of the systematic curriculum coverage the Minister said will take place at school after reopening of schools.

She advised earners in BTVET (Business Technical Vocational Education and Training) institutions, tertiary institutions and Universities to read on a wide range of subjects including Economics, social systems among others to widen their knowledge base.

National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) will work with Universities to ensure continuity of learning.

After the lockdown is lifted, Janet said her Ministry of Education working together with the Ministry of Health will issue Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to education institutions to ensure safety of learners and teachers.