KIU, Main Campus – On April 4th 2020, the Minister of Education and Sports, Janet Museveni advised the nation on a series of issues concerning the nation wide disruption of academic activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Among other issues, she shared a few measures of what the Ministry has done to support stakeholders in the education sector. 

“To date the Government of Uganda through the Ministry of Education and Sports has undertaken a series of measures designed to provide the much-needed support to improve coordination among stakeholders, enhance communication, build capacities of government systems at national and sub national levels as well as provide resources to ensure continuity of learning during the period of closure,” she said. 

As per her address, these are the measures in place: 

1. Set up a sector Coordination Committee to coordinate efforts by education stakeholders to respond to the emerging needs of learners, teachers, education authorities and communities during and after COVID-19 outbreak.

2. Issued policy guidelines in a circular to all heads of schools on school closure operations.

3. We have collected the contact details of all District Education Officers and Head teachers for follow up actions in the local governments.

4. In a bid to ensure that the children are learning during this time of school closure, the ministry under the guidance of NCDC is developing standardised self study lesson packages in all the core subjects for primary and secondary education to be distributed to all learners, including special needs learners across the country.

5. The Ministry has directed Governing councils of universities and other tertiary institutions to ensure that measures are put in place to ensure continuity of remedial learning for all learners.

6. The Ministry has also directed all education institutions not to levy any extra fees in all education institutions following the resumption of education programmes in the current school term/ semester.

7. The ministry is also working with heads of primary and secondary schools to identify model teachers to prepare remedial learning to be delivered on radio and television stations across the country. Other delivery models are being explored to reach all children across the count