Uganda must rethink education delivery modality

EDUCATION | COVID-19

Learners in Uganda are heavily paying the price for the country's lack of an ICT in education policy. Schools were closed on March 2020 and since then, learning is at a standstill. COVID-19 has however given the country the opportunity to better prepare for similar future crises.

In neighbouring Rwanda, schools are set to resume in September 2020. One thing is certain for Uganda. Government was caught off-guard. The pandemic is a painful call to the country to align its education to advances in technology. Learners elsewhere haven't felt much of the impact of COVID-19 on education because their governments made a deliberate decision to integrate ICT in teaching and learning prior to the current situation.

In this era of global citizenship where learners are being prepared to compete for jobs internationally, education shouldn't wait. However, Ugandan learners are now disadvantaged. And the worst is starting to happen! In Koboko, the District Education Officer reported that 564 school girls got pregnant since learners were sent home. Similar stories are being heard in every part of the country. This is catastrophic.

President Yoweri Museveni in his last COVID-19 update tasked the Prime Minister to explore the possibility of rolling out an ambitious nationwide distance education program. He said government would distribute radio and television sets to every household and village respectively. While the intention is good, effective eLearning should be well planned. We ought to be deliberate and systematic in rolling out a plan for digitalized education. There is an urgent need to define the vision for digitalized remote learning, draw the strategy and define key guiding principles

Besides, considering what happened with the distribution of face masks, it's questionable whether his Excellency's proposal will succeed. There are several other implementation challenges including observance of social distancing measures while delivering learning, ownership, and limited reach of radio stations among others.

It should be noted that learning at levels such as preprimary and primary requires close supervision by a trained professional. There is no guarantee that this can be effected when it's delivered via radio and television. Some parents have embraced the responsibility of home-schooling their children. This however doesn't replace the unique function of a teacher. 

I was last week happy to learn that the Ministry of Education and Sports is developing an ICT in education policy which could be operational soon. Better late than never. This policy will ensure quality, standardization, inclusivity and learning continuity.  It should be able to come up with a mix of approaches of delivering learning, segmented according to the various levels of education. ICT offers flexible learning modalities including the ability for a learner to study at his/her own pace.

We must urgently abandon the traditional idea of thinking learning must happen in a physical classroom. With technology, classrooms can be moved to the virtual world, and learning made possible anywhere and at any time.

An ICT in education policy alone is however not adequate. The government must continue investing in supporting infrastructure such as nationwide connectivity etc. Uganda has over the years made great progress in the development of the ICT ecosystem. However, genuine concerns continue to be raised about electricity challenges especially in rural areas, high internet cost, digital literacy skills, availability of gadgets, and attitude problems. Others are limited budget and operational capacity to enable a wide choice of solutions to be implemented and scaled up.  

Multi stakeholder effort is the only viable means of addressing these challenges with the government taking the leading role. The zero-rating of some education websites is a good example of how the private sector can support eLearning. The government can also learn from South Africa which negotiated for the granting of free access to education websites by the country's telecommunication providers.

Parents too have to play their part. We are now in an era where every household needs to own at least one smartphone/tablet to enable learners access educational content. A basic smart phone costs about 40USD (140,000 shillings). Parents should be able to make this vital investment.  

Communications Specialist

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