Nurturing life skills for world of work in a complex society

• In Event: In Pursuit of More Engaging and Equitable Learning Environments: Three Examples from Uganda

Proposal

This presentation will focus on using Social Emotional Learning (SEL) to prepare secondary school students especially girls while developing soft skills that are demanded by employers in the contemporary society. The study in Uganda secondary education and practical sessions conducted by our research team shows that SEL promotes students’ emotional intelligence, positive relationships, goals setting and responsible decisions among students. The school based curriculum for this program is designed to be interactive, informational and self-reflective with specific topics such as mindfulness, meditation, journaling, practice writing etc. This intervention rest on the belief that through regular and positive interaction girls can become leaders, excellent students, gain access to knowledge and resources and discover more about themselves and the world.

The Ugandan education system focuses heavily on students’ academic achievement while soft skills development such as critical thinking, communication, self-awareness, empathy, and emotional intelligence are overlooked but luckily Uganda recently introduced competency-based lower secondary curriculum and this presentation will highlight how the life skills in the new curriculum is being unpacked with this intervention. At the same time, employers indicate that soft skills are more important than academic ability (Awada 2014). Thus, many young people entering the workforce unequipped to deal with the expectations of employers. Currently, in Uganda 80 percent of youth between the ages of 18-30 are unemployed (World Bank). In sub-Saharan Africa’s unemployment rate is 7.2 percent and globally 5 percent (ILO report 2017).

In Uganda, soft skills required for modern work are underemphasized in school even though employers identify them as an indispensable hiring criterion for entry-level jobs (Mitana et al). Today’s assessment of Uganda’s secondary education achievements concentrates more on student’s mastery of content and core academic skills but has neglected soft skills. Although the new lower secondary school curriculum stresses on life skills, assessment still remain a challenge. The 2014-2015 Uganda Ministry of Education Strategic Report argued that learners are failing to acquire the skills and knowledge relevant for the world of work or further education while it stressed that only a minority of students appear to be achieving at the expected levels in post-primary education.

Furthering the issue is how gender affects young girls. Community practices create disparity between genders that affect females more adversely compared to their male counterparts. In Northern Uganda, this is heightened due to the effects of the conflict between Ugandan Government and Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the end of the conflict, studies show wide differences between females and males in literacy, likelihood of continuing to secondary education, exposure to domestic violence, family and community conflicts. Females demonstrate more difficulties in all these areas. While girls and women fall behind boys and men in most indicators of wellbeing, there are indicators that it is possible to close this gap through education and soft skills development.

Authors

• HARRIET VICTORIA ANYANGO, Foundation for Inclusive Community Help (FICH)

• Emmy Zoomlamai Okello, Foundation for Inclusive Community Help (FICH)