Implications of soft skills assessment for national examinations in Uganda

• In Event: Measuring the Unmeasurable Factors that Lead Youth to Success in School and at Work: Innovations and Challenges from Uganda

Proposal

Public examinations are vital for the purposes of certification, selection and placement of learners in appropriate educational courses, standardising educational achievements nationally, and accountability to various stakeholders. But, today examinations have been inappropriately used; for instance in the ranking of the best schools and learners, rewarding and sanctioning of learners, teachers and head-teachers through promotions, transfers and demotions. Additionally, examinations greatly influence classroom practices, including “teaching to the test”. This arises from teachers’ perceptions of what is likely to be examined or examinable. This is mostly true when examinations are highly predictable and test recall and lower order thinking skills.

How could introducing questions that require higher order thinking skills motivate teachers to change the way they teach, and stimulate the teaching of important skills in the classroom?

Mr. Nokrach, in his capacity as Executive Director of UNEB, will share the current state of thinking within the Ugandan Ministry of Education regarding how the examination system should and can be adjusted to better serve the needs of the students and society as a whole. UNEB is currently collaborating with LGIHE to explore the ways in which the secondary school leaving exam can be modified to incorporate higher order and critical thinking skills which would have a systems wide effect on how teachers teach and students prepare for exams.

Mr Odongo Nokrach is the Executive Secretary of Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB). He has presented various papers on educational assessment at different fora both in Uganda and beyond. He is the current President of the Association of Assessment in Education in Africa (AAEA). He is passionate about enhancing and assessing of soft skills within formal education something he is pursuing at both national and Africa levels.

Author

• Odongo Nokrach, Ugandan National Examination Board