By Grace Mwaura, Strategic Education Advisor - VVOB
In most African countries, more young people graduating from secondary schools transition to employment than to tertiary education. Millions of young Ugandans fall under this statistic and are in informal employment, especially in subsistence agriculture. Currently, subsistence agriculture employs up to 47 percent of the working population in Uganda, a majority (55 percent) of whom are women (UBOS 2019/20). If millions of the secondary school leavers are likely to end up in the agriculture sector, why not prepare them early for meaningful and decent opportunities? By doing so, young people could aspire for careers in the agriculture sector while also increasing opportunities for improving the sector.
For young people to be adequately prepared for opportunities in the agriculture world of work, they require the right skills-set, motivation and necessary capitals. In 2020, the Ugandan government rolled out a competency-based curriculum for lower secondary schools to ensure that young people transitioning from the secondary education system leave with the relevant skills. This focus on quality secondary education will give these young men and women a solid foundation for meaningful and decent work while also advancing the various economic sectors. VVOB in Uganda has embarked on supporting the government in the implementation of this new lower secondary curriculum with agriculture and entrepreneurship as our entry points.
Practical teaching which combines practice with theory to ensure learners know and do plays a significant role in skilling youth. In VVOB’s Learning Unlimited strategy, the Skilling for Sustainable Futures (SFSF) flagship envisions not only offering skills, but also on ensuring that young people are equally motivated to join specific productive sectors and are connected to role models from the world of work. Currently, VVOB is supporting Uganda’s National Teachers Colleges of Mubende and Unyama to ensure that secondary school teachers can deliver the new lower secondary curriculum in the most practical way possible by incorporating project-based learning and study and career guidance. And, VVOB is going a step further to ensure that conditions are in place for teachers to sustain these practices and be incentivised to consistently use these pedagogies. For instance, we aim to support the alignment of continuous assessment frameworks to the best practices in project based learning.
It is a journey, a long-winded one
To adequately prepare a young learner, the teacher must be equally prepared. This responsibility of teacher training largely lies with the ministries of education. It involves teacher professional development, curriculum review, development of teaching and learning support materials, as well as policy and governance across all functions of the education system. More importantly, changing the mindset of learners, their parents, and teachers alike, that a quality education that equips learners for the reality outside the classroom requires both grades and hands-on skills.
In Uganda, the journey to transforming teacher training starts at the policy level. For instance, the competence-based curriculum for lower secondary schools is accompanied by the National Teachers Policy that requires upskilling of all teachers through continuous professional development packages. VVOB in Uganda supports the teachers to interpret this curriculum, while on the other hand, supporting the development of teacher professional development interventions aligned to the country’s framework for continuous professional development of teachers.
Sowing seeds – the VVOB approach
It’s against this background that VVOB is sowing seeds of transforming teacher education and training with agriculture and entrepreneurship subjects being the entry point. A Belgian government funded five-year programme, Learning Entrepreneurship and Agriculture Practically (LEAP), is being implemented in national teacher training colleges (NTCs) to address the challenge of skilling through teacher education and training.
Through pre-service training and continuous professional development (CPD) interventions, LEAP will ensure that teachers of lower secondary schools can adequately prepare young people with the skills, motivation and contacts to enable them to engage productively in the agriculture world of work. We do this through reinforcing the implementation of the competence-based curriculum which emphasizes project-based learning and study and career guidance.
The programme will train teachers on networking skills enabling them to onboard role models from the agriculture sector to inspire and motivate secondary school learners through career talks. These role models will be drawn from the local community and from both profit and non-profit sector offering a variation in experiences and perspectives to the young learners.
In the CPD package, school teachers and school leaders will benefit from blended professional development packages enabling them to deliver effective and practical teaching of agriculture and entrepreneurship in their schools. In this intervention, school leadership is a critical momentum builder guiding and leading teachers towards upskilling and a change in mindset regarding teaching practically.
Some of the ‘relevant skills’ that the LEAP programme aims at equipping the learners have been recommended in the 2020 Mastercard Foundation report relating to preparing young people for the workforce. According to the report, in addition to foundational literacy and numeracy, the next set of skills are ‘twenty first century skills, digital skills, STEM skills and knowledge, entrepreneurship skills and work-readiness skills’. All these underpin innovation and are excellent for development of critical thinking and problem analysis and judgement skills in young people. In addition, entrepreneurship skills support youth to create their own employment and thrive in a largely informal economy. Work-readiness skills enable young people to make effective transitions to, and maintain, dignified and fulfilling work. LEAP aims to deliver on these and more such as school leadership.
Initial fruits
Albeit early, some signs of potential fruits are in the horizon. Within only a year of implementing LEAP, some of the teacher trainers at the NTCs confidently express their joy of collaborating across departments of agriculture and business studies in order to prepare meaningful learning experiences. They believe that this shift in their teaching will become a common practice.
With the government at every step, we can do more
In LEAP, the focus is also on supporting the government to improve on teachers' competences to unpack and deliver the lower secondary curriculum more effectively and while doing so, changing their mindset, and in effect that of the learners, on the opportunities available in the agriculture world of work. This is long-term work and why VVOB is long-term partner of the Ministry of Education and Sports.
Adopting a human-centred design approach, the initial years of this programme involve ideation, testing, learning and improving on the teacher professional development interventions with the intention of reaching a scalable and sustainable approach to transforming teacher education and training in Uganda. This is a collaborative effort with the relevant government agencies and departments in curriculum development, assessment, and teacher education and training.
Further, the LEAP programme seeks to broaden investments in the education sector for young people to be prepared for the twenty first century world of work. It is accompanied by a research agenda to generate evidence on the teacher professional development strategies and pedagogical models and their impact on learner outcomes. It is only the beginning of the second year of the five year programme, and we already have a multitude of questions that we would like to help the MoES answer regarding improving teacher training in order to reinforce skilling of the twenty first century workforce. VVOB is committed to walking this journey with the Ugandan government and partners committed to advancing education.
