Open letter to the leadership of MoES, Devt partners & Educationists
Dear the leadership of MoES under the leadership of Hon. Janet Kainembabazi Museveni Kataaha, Minister of Education and Sports (MoES), Devt partners, Educationists, fellow Ugandans and global community, salaams from Gulu University, Quality Education Consultancy Ltd (QECL), OPUL Skilling Foundation Africa (OSFA), Rotary Clubs of Uganda and Uganda Red Cross Society (URCS).
The front page of New Vision of 21 August 2026 carried a headline that should make every education stakeholder pause, reflect and perhaps lose a little sleep: “O’LEVEL SYLLABUS REVISED AGAIN -SCHOOLS STILL FOCUS ON CRAMMING INSTEAD OF SKILLS.” I wish, first and foremost, to commend my vice chancellor of Gulu University- Professor George Ladaah Openjuru who also doubles Chairperson governing Council NCDC , the officials of the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES), the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC), the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE), development partners and all education specialists contributing to Uganda’s curriculum reforms. I particularly appreciate the contribution of UNICEF represented by Ms Akwi Esther, Education Specialist at UNICEF, Prof Prof. Anthony Muwagga Mugagga Colledge of Education and external studies (CEES) Makerere University whose views were featured in the New Vision coverage. Their efforts deserve applause because reforming an education system is no child’s play; it is more like attempting to turn a moving ship without throwing its passengers overboard. NCDC’s own curriculum documents show that Uganda’s competency-based reforms were designed to move learning towards practical application, creativity, innovation, problem-solving and preparation for the world of work.
I concur with NCDC research findings that, Content overload, cramming remains a serious challenge and peer teaching is fundamental. However, I respectfully hasten to ask a more fundamental question: Will another revision of the syllabus, by itself, eliminate the scramble for grades at the expense of skills that can generate start-ups, accelerate businesses, produce innovations, create jobs and generate revenue? My answer is: not necessarily. A syllabus is a map, but a map alone does not move the traveler. A curriculum can tell a teacher, “Develop competencies,” but if the entire education ecosystem continues whispering, “Bring us A’s and B’s,” the old culture of cramming will simply put on a new shirt and continue walking through the school gates.
Through Quality Education Consultancy Ltd (QECL) and OPUL Skilling Foundation Africa (OSFA), I have had the opportunity to visit schools in different parts of Uganda and observe, practically, how the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) is being implemented. My experience gives me considerable optimism. CBC can work. I have encountered teachers and learners with business ideas, innovations, practical projects and entrepreneurial initiatives. There is a Uganda being born in some classrooms-a Uganda of young people who are beginning to ask not merely, “What is the correct answer?” but the far more powerful question, “What can I create with what I have learned?” Unfortunately, the support ecosystem around these promising initiatives remains far too thin. The seed is being planted, but in many cases we are forgetting to water it.
This brings us to what I call “the paradox of grades in the age of competence.” The curriculum language has changed, but the incentive architecture has not changed sufficiently. Uganda says competence, while many stakeholders still hear grades. We tell learners to innovate, but parents may first ask how many distinctions they obtained. We tell schools to nurture creativity, but school reputations can still be built around examination scores. We tell learners to solve community problems, yet the loudest educational applause frequently goes to the school that has harvested the largest crop of A’s and B’s. We have, in effect, installed a new engine in an old vehicle and then wondered why the vehicle keeps travelling along the old road.
NCDC itself is remarkably clear about the intended direction. Its Lower Secondary Entrepreneurship syllabus says entrepreneurship should develop critical thinking, creativity, invention, innovation, practical performance and the functional application of knowledge and skills; it also says learners should be able to identify opportunities, map resources, create jobs and reduce unemployment. The aligned Advanced Level curriculum goes further, emphasizing entrepreneurship, innovation, problem-solving, hands-on experience, the ability to create jobs and address economic, social challenges. The policy intention, therefore, is not the problem. The question is whether the incentives surrounding the policy are strong enough to make its philosophy live beyond the classroom.
We must therefore ask a slightly uncomfortable question: What exactly makes a school “top”? Is it simply the number of A’s and B’s appearing on its results sheet, stacked like trophies on a national scoreboard? Or should a genuinely top school also be recognized for the number of viable innovations its learners develop, businesses they initiate, problems they solve, jobs they create and revenues they generate? Academic excellence must remain important. Nobody is suggesting that Uganda should throw mathematics, science, literacy and intellectual discipline through the classroom window. Good grades matter. But good grades should be the bridge to competence, not the final destination of education.
The ideal formula should be Academic Achievement + Functional Skills + Start-ups + Business Acceleration + Innovations + Jobs Created + Revenue Generated + Community Problems Solved
This is particularly urgent because Uganda’s labour-market realities are knocking loudly on the classroom door. The Uganda Bureau of Statistics’ Labour Market Survey 2025 reports that the employment-to-population ratio for young people aged 15–24 was only 29.6 percent nationally. Meanwhile, UBOS reports that 4,001,528 young people aged 15–24-42.6% were not in employment, education or training (NEET), while among those aged 18–30 the number was 5,250,768, or 50.9%. These figures are not just cold numbers printed in statistical reports. Behind every percentage is a young Ugandan with a brain, ambition, family responsibilities and dreams waiting for an economic door to open. The education system cannot afford to produce young people who can pass examinations brilliantly but struggle to convert knowledge into economic and social value.
That is why I believe Uganda must move from what I call “Education 1.0-Knowledge Acquisition” to “Education 2.0-Knowledge Application” and ultimately to “Education 3.0-Knowledge Commercialization and Social Impact.” The first asks, What do you know? The second asks, What can you do? The third asks, What can society gain from what you can do? This is the missing bridge between competence and transformation.
There is therefore a compelling case for MoES and UNEB to rethink how school performance is communicated to the nation. I am not proposing that grades be abandoned. I am proposing that grades should no longer be the only loudspeaker through which school excellence is announced. Imagine a national education results communication strategy that reports academic achievement alongside innovation and enterprise indicators. One school might have exceptional grades and also produce viable student start-ups. Another might have modest examination performance but produce an impressive number of agricultural enterprises, technological innovations or community solutions. A third might produce innovations that eventually create jobs. Why should the nation see only one side of that story?
This could eventually give birth to a National School Innovation and Enterprise Index, or what I would call the “Second Report Card of Education.” The first report card would answer, How well did learners perform academically? The second would ask, what did that learning produce? Indicators could include academic achievement, functional competencies, viable business start-ups, business acceleration, innovations, products developed, jobs initiated, revenue generated and measurable community impact. Such an approach would not punish academic excellence; rather, it would add the missing dimension of productive excellence.
This would also change the behaviour of schools naturally. School leaders are not irrational. Teachers are not irrational. Parents are not irrational. People respond to incentives. If schools are publicly celebrated almost exclusively for grades, they will rationally invest heavily in grades. If innovation, enterprise and job creation become part of the national definition of excellence, schools will gradually begin investing in those areas as well. The proverb says, “What gets rewarded gets repeated.” We cannot plant maize and complain that the farmer has failed to harvest bananas. If Uganda wants innovation, we must reward innovation.
The issue becomes even more interesting when we examine the place of projects under CBC. UNEB has incorporated project assessment into competency-based assessment, including integrated projects designed around real-life and community-related challenges. UNEB’s 2025 Senior Three project theme, for example, focused on resource utilisation for community development. This is commendable. But it raises another question that Uganda should not sweep under the carpet: What happens to the best projects after they have been assessed? Do they enter an incubation pipeline? Are promising ideas connected to mentors? Are learners guided on intellectual property? Can a good prototype be developed further at A-Level, a vocational institution, university or other higher education institution? Can it be connected to investors, manufacturers, markets or government procurement? Can it become a product on a supermarket shelf? Or does the project receive its marks, fulfil its examination purpose and then disappear into the academic wilderness like a forgotten umbrella after the rainy season?
The danger is that we could end up with what I call “Terminal Project Syndrome”-a situation where a learner develops an impressive project to satisfy an assessment requirement, receives marks for it and then abandons it. That would mean the project has succeeded academically but failed economically. We must instead create a Project-to-Product-to-Market Continuum: problem identification, idea generation, prototype development, testing, improvement, assessment, incubation, production, marketing, revenue generation and scaling.
In other words, the journey should not end at Project → Marks → Certificate. It should evolve into Problem → Idea → Prototype → Assessment → Incubation → Product/Service → Market → Revenue → Jobs → Impact. That is the kind of educational ecosystem capable of turning a school exercise book into an economic engine.
This is where my earlier question becomes unavoidable: What has happened to the projects produced by learners since the introduction of CBC? How many have survived? How many have been commercialized? How many have become businesses? How many have been transferred to A-Level? How many have found their way into universities, technical institutions, incubation hubs or the private sector? How many have reached a supermarket shelf? We should not ask these questions to embarrass anyone. We should ask them because a nation that does not track the journey of its ideas cannot know whether its education system is producing transformation or merely paperwork.
A curriculum revolution cannot be delivered by yesterday’s mindset. Uganda deserves recognition for having taken the courageous step of introducing the Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) at Lower Secondary level in February 2020. The reform was designed to move education away from a knowledge-heavy, examination-oriented model towards competencies, practical skills, values, learner-centred pedagogy and application of knowledge. NCDC describes the reform as a deliberate attempt to prepare learners not merely to know, but to demonstrate what they can do.
Yet, if reports of another review of the O-Level syllabus are indeed signaling the next phase of reform, Uganda should resist the temptation to believe that another curriculum document will automatically produce another kind of graduate. A syllabus is a map; a teacher is the navigator. Changing the map while leaving the navigator without new skills, tools, incentives and confidence may simply take us to the same destination by a more expensive road. The proverb says, “You cannot teach an old dog new tricks,” but education policy should prove the proverb wrong by helping teachers become lifelong learners. The real question is therefore not merely what should be revised?, but what must change around the teacher so that the revised curriculum becomes lived classroom practice?
This matters because CBC is not a photocopying exercise. It requires projects, experimentation, collaboration, research, feedback, continuous assessment and meaningful learner participation. Asking a teacher with a large class, limited materials and unreliable connectivity to conduct sophisticated competency-based learning is sometimes like asking a boda-boda rider to win a Formula One race after giving him a bicycle pump. The rider may have the courage; the machine simply has other ideas. The lesson from the first CBC cycle should therefore not be “the syllabus needs another haircut.” It should be “the entire implementation ecosystem requires strengthening.”
The most dangerous contradiction is that the curriculum says “competence,” while the education ecosystem often still whispers “grades.” Uganda has made important changes to assessment on paper: NCDC states that the revised curriculum moved from norm-referenced comparison toward criterion-referenced assessment, with formative assessment intended to contribute to the Senior Four result.
This is the great CBC paradox: the curriculum tells learners to think, the examination tells them to remember, the teacher tells them to participate, the timetable tells them to hurry, and the parent asks, “What grade did you get?” Everyone is singing from a different hymn book. We then act surprised when the educational choir sounds like three choirs rehearsing in three different villages.
The teacher is the missing variable in Uganda’s reform equation. NCDC’s own implementation framework envisages a transition from teacher-centred instruction to learner-centred learning, with practical activities, projects, research, community engagement and application of knowledge.
That fundamentally changes the teacher’s professional identity. The teacher must become a learning architect, facilitator, coach, mentor, assessor, researcher and designer of authentic learning experiences not merely a walking textbook with a piece of chalk in one hand and an examination timetable in the other. But professional identity does not change because a new syllabus has been stapled onto an old lesson plan. A teacher who spent decades being rewarded for syllabus coverage, quiet classrooms and examination drilling cannot reasonably be expected to become a project supervisor, digital learning designer and competency assessor overnight. A policy can change the script; it cannot change the actor unless the actor is trained, coached, supported and motivated to perform the new role. Therefore, every future O-Level review must include a parallel Teacher Mindset Transformation Programme: sustained CPD, coaching, peer observation, lesson study, demonstration classrooms, digital pedagogy, project supervision and competency-based assessment-not one-off workshops where teachers receive a folder, sign an attendance sheet and return to school to discover that nothing else has changed.
Uganda’s own TISSA evidence warned us about this problem more than a decade ago. The UNESCO Teachers Initiative in Sub-Saharan Africa (TISSA) assessment of Uganda examined teacher supply, preparation, deployment, professional recognition, quality assurance, motivation and management as interconnected system issues. It identified demographic pressure, inadequate supply of adequately trained teachers and weaknesses in teacher preparation and support.
More recent UNESCO reporting on Uganda’s teacher reforms notes that the 2013 TISSA analysis identified teacher shortages, weak professional recognition, fragmented quality assurance, gaps in training and deployment, and low motivation.
The lesson is as clear as a bell at dawn: teacher quality is not manufactured by exhortation. It is produced by recruitment, preparation, deployment, continuous development, leadership, working conditions, remuneration, professional dignity and accountability working together. TISSA therefore provides Uganda with a systems compass: recruit, prepare, deploy, retrain, motivate, recognize and retain. Ignoring that architecture while repeatedly revising curriculum is like repainting a house whose foundation is quietly negotiating with gravity.
Salary harmonization is therefore not an industrial footnote; it is a curriculum issue. Uganda’s National Teacher Policy seeks to promote a motivated, professional and ethically upright teaching force, strengthen teacher productivity and retention, standardize teacher management and improve the competence of teachers across the education system. Salary harmonisation should therefore be accompanied by a rational career structure that recognises qualifications, workload, responsibility, leadership, specialised expertise and difficult-to-staff locations. A harmonized salary that ignores radically unequal workloads is only arithmetic wearing a necktie. Uganda should not demand Ferrari performance from teachers while financing them like bicycles.
Economic relevance must become the heartbeat of O-Level education. The original rationale for Uganda’s curriculum reform was connected to changing social and economic demands, employment, self-employment, science and technology, agriculture, commerce and competitiveness. NCDC’s current curriculum direction also integrates areas such as entrepreneurship, ICT and other cross-cutting concerns. But economic relevance must be more than inserting “entrepreneurship” into a subject timetable like parsley on a plate. Every O-Level learner should encounter authentic economic and community problems. Mathematics can teach financial literacy, budgeting, statistics and business modelling; biology can connect with agriculture, nutrition and health; chemistry can connect with manufacturing and environmental solutions; geography can address land use and climate resilience; ICT can produce digital solutions; languages can develop communication and creative industries; history and civic education can strengthen institutional and economic literacy. Knowledge should be the seed; competence should be the tree; productivity and social impact should be the fruit. If the learner can recite twenty definitions but cannot analyse a household budget, interpret data, develop a prototype or solve a community problem, Uganda may have produced an excellent parrot-but parrots do not build economies.
School projects should become innovation pipelines, not ranking trophies. Across Uganda, CBC implementation has generated encouraging examples of learners undertaking practical projects and community-oriented activities. This is precisely the kind of educational soil that should be cultivated. But when school rankings, public prestige and parental expectations remain dominated by examination aggregates, projects can become another competition for marks rather than laboratories for imagination. The danger is that adults begin making the project while the learner performs the grand opening ceremony. That would be the educational equivalent of hiring someone to exercise on your behalf. Uganda should therefore redesign school accountability to include innovation, enterprise, community impact and alumni outcomes. Schools could be recognized for student enterprises incubated, innovations prototyped, community problems solved, alumni employment and enterprise creation, intellectual-property development, revenue generated and partnerships formed. The question should no longer be only, “How many distinctions did your school produce?” but also, “What did your school produce that made somebody’s life, community or economy better?” A school should not merely be a factory producing certificates; it should be an innovation foundry.
Alignment with NDP IV, Revenue Imperatives and Uganda’s Tenfold Growth Strategy from teaching for yesterday’s examinations to learning for tomorrow’s economy. The future is already knocking on Uganda’s classroom door. We cannot give it yesterday’s teacher, yesterday’s incentives and yesterday’s measuring tape, then complain that the future has arrived looking unfamiliar. As the African proverb reminds us, “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” MoES, NCDC, UNEB, teacher-training institutions, development partners, school leaders, teachers, parents, universities, employers and learners must now walk together. Otherwise, we shall keep pouring new wine into old bottles and wondering why the bottle keeps cracking. The syllabus is not the reform. The teacher is the reform. The classroom is the laboratory. The learner is the evidence. And Uganda’s productivity is the final examination.
Recommendations:
Transform teachers from syllabus deliverers into economic-learning architects.
Every O’Level teacher should be oriented to see their subject as a tool for solving economic and community problems. CPD should include project-based learning, entrepreneurship, digital skills, financial literacy, innovation, mentoring and industry exposure. A mathematics teacher, for example, should be able to turn a lesson on percentages into pricing, profit margins and household budgeting; a biology teacher into an agricultural enterprise problem; an ICT teacher into a digital-product challenge. The mindset shift should be from “How do I finish this topic?” to “What can learners create, solve or improve with this knowledge?”
Create a “Project-to-Product-to-Market” pipeline in every school.
CBC projects should not end when learners receive marks. Schools should identify promising projects, connect learners with mentors, universities, technical institutions, incubators and businesses, and support the journey from problem → idea → prototype → testing → product/service → market → revenue → jobs → impact. The best projects could be tracked nationally through a School Innovation and Enterprise Index, giving recognition not only to examination performance but also to innovations, enterprises, jobs, revenue and community solutions.
Change the incentives that define a “successful school.”
UNEB, MoES and development partners should retain academic achievement while adding measures of functional competence, innovation and economic impact. Schools, teachers and learners should receive recognition for exceptional projects, start-ups, patents/IP, community solutions, partnerships, enterprise development and other measurable outcomes. At the same time, teacher remuneration, workload, professional development and career progression should be aligned with the increasingly complex role expected of teachers. If Uganda rewards only grades, the system will continue producing grades; if it rewards productive competence, schools will invest in productive competence.
Final Call to Action
Uganda’s education revolution requires a holistic approach where curriculum reform is complemented by a transformation in teacher mindsets, assessment systems, and incentive structures. Let us work together: government, development partners, educators, private sector players, Industrial players, parents, and learners to build an education system that not only imparts knowledge but also ignites creativity, innovative entrepreneurship, and social impact. The future of Uganda depends on our collective commitment to turn today’s learners into innovators and drivers of economic growth. The time to act is now let’s plant the seeds of transformation on fertile ground.
Conclusion
A curriculum cannot transform an economy if the ecosystem around it remains unchanged. Transform the teacher. Connect projects to markets. Reward productive competence.Uganda’s greatest educational achievement should not only be how many learners pass examinations, but how many go on to create value, solve problems, build enterprises and generate jobs.Let us stop planting new curriculum seeds in old, rocky soils. Let us transform the soil and grow an education system capable of powering Uganda’s economic transformation.
Dr. OPUL JOSEPH, PhD
Lecturer, Gulu University
Founder, Quality Education Consultancy Ltd (QECL)
CEO, OPUL Skilling Foundation Africa (OSFA)
President, Rotary Club of Soroti Central
Life Member, Uganda Red Cross Society
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