News in brief

Educate the blind - Nkoyoyo MUKONO-The former Archbishop of the Church of Uganda has urged the Government to set up more schools for visually-impaired children. The Rt. Rev. Livingstone Mpalanyi Nkoyoyo said the move would curb illiteracy among the blind. “The central region, with a population of eight million people, has only one school for the blind and it is expensive,” he said. There are over 400,000 blind children in the country, but only 21% of them have access to education, Nkoyoyo noted. He made the remarks while officiating at the graduation of over 200 blind students at Chain Foundation, Uganda. The institution has helped over 500 blind children acquire vocational skills. Nkoyoyo also called for the treatment of conditions that can cause blindness.

Schools to embrace ICTs KAMPALA-Plans are underway to have all schools in the country use information and communication technologies (ICTs), the education minister has revealed. Namirembe Bitamazire said the measure would enable students to acquire skills that would make them competitive globally. “The learning environment within schools must become seamless and emulate the characteristics of the outside world.” The minister was speaking at the ICT innovation forum at Hotel Africana on Monday. Last year, the ministry trained 3,000 teachers in ICTs and over 1,000 are still undergoing training at the Faculty of Computing and Information Technology at Makerere University.