Special Needs School Teachers Oppose Automatic Promotion of Learners
Written by admin on January 4, 2022
Teachers in special needs schools have opposed the rationale for the automatic promotion of learners, following almost two years of school closures countrywide.
The new schools and other institutions calendar released by the Ministry of Education provides that when the schools reopen on January 10, learners will be automatically promoted to the next class, according to their respective education cycle. However, teachers of children with special needs are arguing that this will instead complicate the learning progress of their learners.
Anne Florence Nakabuye, the in-charge of Misanvu Special Needs Education Unit which operates under Misanvu Demonstration Primary School in Bukomansimbi district argues that automatic promotion is illogical for the learners who largely remained unattended in the entire COVID-19 lockdown period.
According to Nakabuye, the government failed to cater for the unique interests of learners with special needs during the production and distribution of home-study materials which made them lag far behind in the learning process compared to their counterparts who accessed the study materials.
Nakabuye explains that for instance the blind and half-blind learners who require braille and enlarged printed materials supported with a sense of touch, were not catered for during the Ministry of Education homeschooling programs, and as a result, she says, their learning stopped with the closure of formal classes in March 2020.
She argues that promoting such learners before they complete the syllabus in their former classes will gravely affect their learning process and eventually catch up with them in the future.
Oliva Namugabo, a sign language instructor at Masaka School for the Deaf-Ndegeya, says that the COVID-19 lockdown completely detached their learners from education. She says that they instead require more time to catch up with the syllabus of their respective classes.
Although the Minister of Education and Sports Janet Museveni indicated that learners will have to undergo remedial classes to enable them to catch up with the syllabus, the teacher prefers that the Minister gives an exception for schools for children with special needs. She is afraid that many of the learners who study sign language have forgotten the contents of their previous classes due to lack of practice, adding that such learners cannot be automatically promoted.
On the other hand, Nakabuye has also expressed concern about President Yoweri Museveni’s directive that banned parents from paying any money to schools implementing the Universal Primary and Secondary Education programs, arguing that if implemented, the pronouncement will be detrimental to special needs schools.
