The National Curriculum Development Centre will pilot new lower primary and A-Level curricula before national rollout. This is a shift from the approach that saw the lower secondary curriculum introduced in 2020 without testing.
Dr Patrick Ssembinge, NCDC’s Deputy Director for Curriculum Development, said the two curricula are ready and are scheduled for piloting next year as part of the council’s implementation plans.
Piloting is a critical stage in curriculum development because it allows education authorities to test a new curriculum in real school settings, identify gaps and address challenges before nationwide implementation. Against this background, Dr Ssembinge acknowledged that several challenges during the lower secondary curriculum rollout stemmed from skipping the pilot phase, leaving the system to confront problems as they emerged.
“Instead of waiting for problems to emerge after national rollout, NCDC will have an opportunity to observe how the proposed curricula work in real classrooms,” Ssembinge said. “Teachers will provide feedback on the content and teaching methods, while learners’ experiences will help identify areas requiring adjustment.” The lower secondary curriculum was rushed through in 2020 amid protests from educators and Parliament over its readiness.
Legislators and education stakeholders raised concerns about teacher training, materials, methodology, and instruction materials and time before rollout. However, the Ministry of Education pushed ahead anyway, citing bureaucratic delays, political pressure after more than a decade of planning, and financial constraints. It skipped a formal pilot despite the objections. The consequences emerged quickly, including unfamiliarity with competence-based learning, inadequate teacher preparation, shortages of learning materials, and difficulties adapting to new teaching and assessment methods.
Many of these problems had to be addressed during the rollout rather than before implementation, with some still affecting the education system today. That experience is now shaping how NCDC approaches its next two reforms. Dr Ssembinge said the lessons go beyond teacher preparation. A curriculum requires textbooks, assessment tools, trained teachers and clear implementation guidelines to work together, and piloting provides an opportunity to test whether all these elements are ready before national rollout.
The stakes are particularly high for lower primary, where children develop foundational literacy and numeracy skills. Gaps at this stage often affect learning in later years. The A-Level review, meanwhile, comes as Uganda seeks to make upper secondary education more responsive to higher education, vocational training and the labour market.
Available information shows that the lower primary curriculum, currently known as the thematic curriculum and covering Primary One to Primary Three, will be piloted in 100 schools across the country. If the pilot identifies no major gaps, the curriculum is expected to be rolled out nationally in 2028.
In the same vein, Gilbert Gift Siima, the Manager of the Secondary Education Department at NCDC, said the A-Level curriculum will be piloted in a yet-to-be-determined number of schools across the country’s four major regions starting next year. He added that NCDC is currently conducting alpha testing of the A-Level curriculum in selected schools across the country. Data collected during the exercise will be used to refine and strengthen the curriculum before the wider pilot.
The A-Level curriculum review comes later than planned. The review was expected to take place earlier so the upper secondary curriculum could align with the revised lower secondary curriculum before the first cohort under the new system reached A-Level. The review was delayed by several factors, including funding constraints. As a result, NCDC had to adapt the existing A-Level curriculum to meet competence-based requirements while awaiting the broader review.
If the current timeline holds, the revised A-Level curriculum will be ready for implementation in 2028, three years after it was initially needed in 2025. Meanwhile, NCDC is yet to disclose the specific changes expected in the new curricula. Several media reports have speculated about possible changes to subject menus and modes of instruction at both levels. NCDC officials, however, say the details are still being refined and are subject to change based on feedback from validation exercises, alpha testing, and the pilot phase-URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
