Universities across Uganda have submitted about 700 redesigned academic programmes to the National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) for accreditation as the country moves towards a competence-based approach to university education.
The programmes are being reviewed as part of a wider reform intended to shift higher education away from traditional teaching methods that place emphasis on theoretical knowledge and end-of-semester examinations towards practical skills, continuous assessment and learner-centred teaching.
Dr Alex Mugisha Kagume, the Deputy Executive Director of NCHE, said the council has started receiving the redesigned programmes from universities seeking approval under the new standards.
Kagume said NCHE has assembled a team of assessors drawn from experienced lecturers and professors from different universities to undertake the review.
Before the assessment begins, the assessors are undergoing a three-day orientation on the minimum standards that institutions are expected to follow when redesigning their programmes. They are also being taken through the assessment checklist that will guide the review process.
The orientation, Kagume said, is intended to ensure that assessors apply uniform standards when examining the programmes submitted by different institutions.
Dr David Musiimaami, the Head of Standards, Recognition and Equating of Qualifications at NCHE, said the review will pay particular attention to how universities intend to deliver the new programmes.
He said the reforms are expected to replace the conventional lecture model, in which the lecturer largely controls the learning process, with approaches that place students at the centre of learning.
“Methods should be learner-centred, so that the lecturer will just be there to facilitate learners, guide and the like,” Musiimaami said.
He added that NCHE is adopting the term “facilitator” in place of “lecturer” to reflect the changing role of teaching staff under the competence-based model.
Assessment of students is also expected to change. According to Musiimaami, universities will be required to give greater weight to projects, practical assignments and continuous assessment instead of relying mainly on final examinations.
Dr Vincent Ssembatya, the Director of Quality Assurance and Accreditation at NCHE, said assessors will examine more than the content of the submitted curricula.
They will also establish whether universities have adequate numbers of qualified staff, learning facilities and other resources to support the number of students they intend to admit.
“The aim is to ensure that universities can only admit as many learners as they are actually able to teach,” Ssembatya said.
He said the checks are intended to prevent universities from increasing student enrolment without having sufficient teaching staff, equipment and infrastructure to provide the required quality of education.
NCHE currently has about 4,000 accredited programmes across universities and other tertiary institutions, with undergraduate courses accounting for roughly half of the total.
The immediate focus of the review will be undergraduate programmes as universities prepare for the 2027/2028 academic year, when the new requirements are expected to take effect.
The Ministry of Education and Sports previously directed universities to align their programmes with the Competence-Based Education and Training (CBET) framework.
Under the directive, universities are required to redesign existing curricula and submit them to NCHE for re-evaluation and accreditation before enrolling students under the new system.
Programmes that are not redesigned and resubmitted, or those that fail to meet the prescribed minimum standards, could lose the accreditation required for institutions to legally admit students.
The transition represents a major change in Uganda’s education system, moving from an approach that largely measures what students know to one that places greater emphasis on what they can practically do with the knowledge and skills acquired.
The competence-based approach has already been introduced at lower levels of education and is now being extended to universities and other tertiary institutions.
With the 2027/2028 admission cycle approaching, NCHE faces the challenge of processing the growing number of submissions while maintaining the quality and rigor of accreditation.
The outcome of the exercise will determine whether universities have successfully adapted their programmes, teaching methods, assessment systems and resources to produce graduates with skills that can be applied beyond the classroom and in the workplace.
English 