Africa-Press – Uganda. The Ministry of Education and Sports has announced compulsory countrywide registration of all Senior One and Two learners in both public and private schools for National Identification Numbers (NINS) .
Dr Denis K Mugimba, the spokesperson of Ministry of Education, said the registration by the National Identification Registration Authority (NIRA) is expected to enable continuous follow up and progress assessment of each learner through the education levels under the new O-Level curriculum roll- out plan.
“We are going to begin with Senior One and Senior Two students because their NINs are required by Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) as part of the revised lower curriculum implementation process, which requires continuous assessment,” Dr Mugimba told Monitor yesterday.
“The marks for continuous assessment are supposed to be submitted to Uneb beginning with Senior Three. For the lower secondary curriculum, we started implementing it in 2020, so its pioneers are in Senior Two, so they will have to start sending their assessment marks to Uneb in 2023,” he added.
Dr Mugimba also said they want learners to get NINs because the number will identify them throughout their entire education system.
He added that the exercise is expected to begin on July 1.
“Our target is to cover all local governments and to register all Senior One and Senior Two learners in approximately 5,550 secondary schools by December. All schools should start sending in lists of students,” reads part of the June 7 letter released by Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Education Ketty Lamaro yesterday.
“You are requested to avail lists of all of your learners in Senior One and Senior Two classes of 2022 to the Ministry of Education and Sports by June 20 for effective planning,” the letter adds.
It states that the lists will then be verified and used by NIRA for registration.
“By the end of the exercise, we are expecting to register 1.27 million learners basing on the pass rate for Primary Leaving Examination (PLE) of 2019 and 2020 where in 2019, we had 617,000 learners passing, while in 2020, we had 659,000,” Dr Mugimba said.
The lower secondary curriculum was rolled out on February 3, 2020 before the closure of schools in March due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
New curriculum
Under the new curriculum, subjects were reduced from 43 to 21, and schools are expected to offer 11 compulsory subjects at Senior One and Senior Two in addition to one elective subject.
The students make a choice of seven compulsory subjects at Senior Three, but must exit with a minimum of eight subjects and a maximum of nine if they are to be graded at Senior Four.
Kiswahili, Physical Education and Entrepreneurship Education have been made compulsory for Senior One and Senior Two students.
The government also integrated into the curriculum various subjects, including HIV/Aids, climate change, gender, patriotism and human rights.
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