KAMPALA – The Education Ministry of Education and Sports made the study of sciences compulsory for students at the Ordinary Level with the hope of building and boosting the country’s capacity in the field of science.
However, years down the road, science subjects remain the worst-done subjects in the country despite more efforts put into its promotion.
According to the examinations body, Uganda National Examinations Board – UNEB, the poor performance is partly due to ill-equipped laboratories.
While many private schools have no laboratories, some have laboratories without the necessary equipment. The government schools that have both laboratories and equipment were found not to have utilised them properly.
To solve this, Science Teaching and Innovations Africa on Saturday launched “mini laboratory for schools”, a science laboratory kit, that comes with the key elements in learning science, aimed at promoting practical studies in secondary schools.
Speaking at the workshop on building the capacity of secondary school science teachers on how to teach science practically, Amon Rugira, Country Director, Science Teaching and Innovations Africa said it should be every teacher’s emphasis on the use of the laboratory.
“We have many laboratories in our schools but we noticed that in most cases students do not use them. We came up with a book “laboratory instruction manual” tailored to offer support to students. We are helping teachers manage the laboratory sessions such that by the time students go to the laboratory they already know what to expect.”
He noted that all the equipment in their kit is locally made in a such way to make it cheap, and readily be got from any part of the country.
He revealed that one of the biggest challenges has always been limited professional development for teachers – noting that for teachers to be efficient, they need continuous professional development, “like what we doing here today, empowering them, building skills, encouraging Innovations.”
Rugira also spoke to the significance of Artificial intelligence and ICT which he says if well utilized will simplify the work of teachers since the learners can access content on their own.
“We have been facing a challenge of teacher-student ratio. It’s very unpractical for one teacher to handle over a hundred students but with the use of technology, a teacher can handle as many students as possible.”
Nabbasa Stuart, a biology and chemistry teacher from Science Teaching and Innovations Africa said they intend to make science teaching easy, and interesting “so that we remove the forbear of learners that science subjects are hard.”
“We want to empower different science teachers – we have a teacher support platform, when the teacher is in class and finds a challenge in some concepts, they dail in some ussd code and get helped there and then. We also give teachers materials and capacity concerning implementation and interpretation so that the intended outcomes of the new curriculum come out fast.”
Kabali Munilu – a physics and mathematics teacher from Mmanze Secondary School, Wakiso says he has been in class for the last twelve years but their biggest challenge has been teaching physics given its complexity.
“The reason why it is the worst-done subject in Uganda, it is a practical subject but we normally teach it in a theory form.”
He is optimistic that this kit is going to ease science teaching and encourage more students to do science.
“I want to ask the government to deliver this kit because we need it especially for us teaching in village schools where a learner cannot afford to contribute even one thousand shillings for any demonstrations.”