Ms Loy Tumusiime, Patron of the Reading Association of Uganda
By Brian Mutebi
Kampala.
A national conference on literacy will take place in Kampala on Wednesday. The conference will be hosted for researchers in education, teachers, civil society and government officials to discuss literacy and digital teaching, learning and community participation in children’s literacy.
Hosted under the theme: “Innovative Literacy Policies and Practices in Uganda: positioning learning as the core outcome of education for all,” the conference comes on the backdrop of several research findings indicating literacy levels among pupils is steadily going down. A 2012 family-based literacy competence research report by UWEZO – a Kenya-based organisation operating in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, noted that 59 per cent of pupils in Primary Six failed English proficiency tests.
“Children go to school but are not necessarily learning,” states Ms Loy Tumusiime, Patron of the Reading Association of Uganda (RAU), the organisers of the conference in collaboration with National Book Trust of Uganda (NABOTU).
She noted that it is the level of learning a child gets, not the years he or she spends in school, that lead to social and economic returns. This means besides reading, writing and numeracy, children need to learn transferable skills such as critical thinking, problem solving and civic values in order to compete for the scarce global opportunities.
The 350 conference participants will lobby government and civil society to focus on “access and learning” in education, rather than just access alone. In 1997 when government introduced the Universal Primary Education (UPE), the focus was on access – getting as many children in school as possible. As a result, more than seven million children enrolled compared to about two million in school previously. Ms Tumusiime says while UPE registered a big achievement in access to education, it is time focus is extended to learning as well.
CREDIT: DAILY MONITOR
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