95 New Fully Governemnt-Owned Secondary Schools To Be Commissioned. – Education Minister.

The Minister of Education and Sports, Hon. Janet K. Museveni has revealed that the Government is in a bid to bring affordable and accessible public Secondary School education to each sub-county that has none.

“By God’s grace, once the lockdown measures have been eased, my ministry shall be ready to commission at least 95 brand new fully government-owned and complete Secondary Schools,” Janet revealed.

Janet made this known at the release of the 2020 UCE results on Friday, 3oth July 2021 at the State House, Nakasero,  as she reacted to the unfortunate reduction in the number of candidates registered for the examinations compared with 2019.

The minister further revealed that these new schools, fondly referred to as Seed Schools, are non-boarding schools with a capacity for 400 students for both boys and girls. Each of these schools is already staffed with 31 teaching staff including the Head Teacher.

The facilities at these new government schools include six classrooms, fully equipped science laboratories, a library and ICT laboratory, a 400-seater Multipurpose Hall, and four staff houses among others.

“As the NRM government, we truly envision a future where no learner shall ever have to forego their O-Level studies for the reason of not having an affordable and accessible quality public Secondary School,” Janet said.

Besides, the Minister wondered on an inquisitive note as to why poor performance in Science Subjects has become perennial yet the government has taken a number of strides to overcome this.

“We are not seeing improvement in performance in the Science subjects commensurate to the investments we are making in this area as government. UNEB has done a good job by providing us with data that gives us a general idea that there is a problem,” Janet wondered.

Janet revealed that the government has recruited more science teachers and enhanced their salaries to at least UGX 1.2 million per month for undergraduates.

She added that, “Public Secondary schools have the best equipped and resourced Science laboratories. Additionally, we have had a program called SESEMAT to build capacity of Secondary School teachers in the area of pedagogy for teaching sciences. So, where and why is there a problem?”

She therefore, against this, tasked the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education and Sports to give attention to providing credible answers to these perennial problems.