The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Ministry of Education and Sports has temporarily halted the Law Development Centre‘s bar online classes after receiving several complaints from students.
The Law Development Centre-LDC had opened up an online portal two weeks ago to ensure continuity of learning during the lockdown. But State Minister for Higher Education John Chrysostom Muyingo says that several parliamentarians had petitioned the ministry saying that the online learning at LDC was segregative.
A subsequent investigation established that a number of under privileged students had been left out. “The ministry supports online learning but we want all students to be on board and therefore we have advised them to stop the lessons until when the lockdown is lifted,” Muyingo says.
The Director of the Law Development Centre Frank Nigel Othembi notes that they will not have lessons beyond today Friday, June 19, after the guidance from the Ministry of Education. He says that instead, students will be encouraged to undertake self-study activities and research.
But he hastens to add that the Law Development Centre is engaging the ministry to establish why LDC cannot conduct online classes yet many other educational institutions are employing the same.
Education institutions across the country were prematurely closed on March 20, leaving up to 15 million Ugandan learners stranded at home as the government banned public gatherings as a measure to forestall the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A recent report by UNICEF indicated that inherent inequalities in accessing the internet and other tools to allow children to continue their studies threaten to deepen the global crisis in learning. In Uganda, nearly 90 percent of them do not have household computers or mobile phones and a huge population is unable to get online with the country’s internet penetration estimated at 19 percent.
Other challenges to distance learning include electricity to power the gadgets which leaves many learners with no option for learning outside the physical school set up.
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