Rethinking science teaching at O’level

Unhappy teachers

Back in the classroom, Osabe Mugisa, who has been teaching biology for 20 years at Kyebambe Girls School in Kabarole District in western Uganda, recalls the `good’ times before sciences became compulsory.

She told The Independent that, even back then, many students thought sciences were not easy to pass. She says, however, by the time students got to Senior Three, some chose sciences because they had interest and felt they could pass them.

This is no longer the case.

Students are these days forced to do subjects they do not want to study.

Mugisa also blames the failure to give guidance and counseling to students on study tips and what they can become after studies—something which encourages students to put in that extra time to achieve their goal.  Mugisa’s average class at Kyebambe Girls is 65 students, a fairly manageable number. But she thinks this is slightly big for a science class. The big classes are partly because there are at least 4000 science teacher vacancies in government aided secondary schools across Uganda, according to the education ministry.

With her 20-year experience of teaching science, Mugisa says, besides biology—which is about life— students should be given the freedom to choose subjects of their choice.

“It is time wasting for some students who actually have no future in pursuing sciences.”

“Much as we want to have a society which appreciates science, let children be given enough of science in primary such that if one is a scientist, they are identified there and encouraged to pursue these subjects in secondary.”

Mugisa told The Independent that even the extra allowances for science teachers do not make any major difference. Under the new terms, science teachers earn an additional 30% of their salary, and another 30% if they serve in so-called hard to reach areas. Based on this, during the release of O-level results last year, the Minister of Education, Jessica Alupo, told journalists that as far as motivation of teachers is concerned the government had done 99.9%.

“These interventions should be enough to improve actual teaching,” she said.

Other experts insist most schools in Uganda do not have the right environment for teaching and learning science; especially in the lower classes.

They say science is highly technical and most of the knowledge is built progressively from Senior 1-4 and further on. They say both the teaching and learning strategies have to be changed quickly.

Kitgum High School, also in northern Uganda, has been a beneficiary of the government pushing of science. It is here that Amos Komakech teaches physics. He says he still struggles to find time for practical work because the syllabus is too broad.

“There is too much content and the time allocated is not enough and so we struggle to cope with coverage.”

Reforms to curriculum

It is a problem that James Asile Droti, a curriculum specialist for science at the National Curriculum Development Centre (NCDC) says the agency is working on.

He says obsolete and irrelevant content is being replaced with material relevant to contemporary society. Droti says the NCDC goal is to ensure that knowledge learnt from the natural sciences – physics, chemistry and biology- becomes integrated.

“This in essence will mean that the learner will not have to learn similar concepts in different subjects,” he says. They want scientific knowledge learned to be functional science and enable students to use it in everyday life. Only those who are more interested will then pursue ‘extended science’ as opposed to ‘core science’ which will be for everyone.

“We hope that the re-invigoration of the curriculum will arouse the interest of the learners because it is going to be applicable in everyday life and interactive in class.”

To achieve this, NCDC has come up with six strands in the Science Learning Area including; diversity, processes, systems, interactions, energy, and earth and space.  This, Droti says, is expected to also minimize content overload and repetition.

Mary Goretti Nakabugo, the country coordinator for Uwezo, an initiative that seeks to improve learning and numeracy across East Africa told The Independent that the science policy was made with good intentions but “the will was not matched with action”.

“It is one good thing to think about something and it is another how you make it happen.”  “We are churning out students who are complete failures.”

Nakabugo says that if one were to do a deeper analysis of students who fail including those in third grade, if you look at the subjects they failed (F-9s), those subjects are usually sciences.

Nakabugo says this only shows that the students never got the basics in these science subjects.  “In the past students who pursued Science subjects were those who really had interest and could do whatever it takes to pass the subjects.”

Nakabugo says when it comes to learning, every student can learn and pass; it is not ability but the effort invested.

“Students normally put effort in things they have interest and the reverse is true. That alone has not helped the situation.”

Nakabugo says if she were to rank the factors for poor performance in science subjects, the teacher factor is very huge.

“We have a situation where in most schools, especially in rural schools, there are no science teachers and where they exist, you might question their competence.”

Nakabugo says the issue of addressing learning science is very complex; and it ranges right from the interest of the students to the teacher who is teaching them to the extreme where there are no teachers at all.

Nakabugo wants the science policy re-thought. She says a decade is a good point to review a policy. She says rather than help the economy, the policy is depleting the little resources the country has to teach those sciences and students are not learning.

“It is high time we rethought the policy to ensure that whoever goes to study sciences is actually learning.”