Title: When Policy Collides with Practice: Uganda's CBC Mandatory Tours and the Kapchorwa Tragedy
Authors: Dr. Arinaitwe Julius
Dr. Twinomujuni Rosebell
Ahumuza Audrey
Volume: 10
Issue: 8
Pages: 301-309
Publication Date: 2026/08/28
Abstract:
This study investigated the gap between national curriculum policy intent and on-the-ground safety practice in Uganda's Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), using the fatal 16 July 2026 Kapchorwa school bus tragedy - in which a bus returning pupils and staff of a Kampala-based primary school from an educational tour to Sipi Falls crashed at the notorious Chekwatit Hill blackspot, killing around twenty pupils and members of staff - as the motivating case for an empirical assessment of school-level compliance with the emergency Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) subsequently issued by the Ministry of Education and Sports. The main objective was to examine the extent and determinants of compliance with the post-Kapchorwa tour safety SOPs among CBC-implementing schools, and to assess school-level safety preparedness in the weeks following the tragedy. A cross-sectional, multistage stratified survey of 340 primary and secondary schools nested within 18 districts across Uganda's four regions was conducted roughly six weeks after the tragedy, collecting institutional, tour-history, SOP-training, compliance, and preparedness data through a structured, MoES-SOP-aligned questionnaire administered to head teachers and tour coordinators. Data were analysed using univariate descriptive statistics, bivariate chi-square and t-tests, and multilevel mixed-effects logistic and linear regression models with random intercepts for district to account for clustering. Only 32.6 percent of schools had achieved full compliance with the mandatory SOPs at the time of the survey, with marked disparities by locale and training exposure. In adjusted multilevel models, SOP training exposure (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 1.70, 95% CI: 1.22-2.35), rural location (aOR = 0.43, 95% CI: 0.30-0.61), head-teacher experience, and tour frequency were independently associated with full compliance, while school ownership and education level lost statistical significance once training and locale were accounted for. A parallel mixed linear model of the continuous safety preparedness score found private ownership, SOP training, rural locale, education level, and head-teacher experience all independently significant, with an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.173 indicating that roughly one-sixth of the variance in preparedness was attributable to between-district differences. The study concluded that the policy-practice gap exposed by the Kapchorwa tragedy was real, measurable, and systematically patterned by training access and rurality rather than by curriculum mandate alone, and it recommended prioritised rural SOP training rollout, strengthened district-level enforcement, and subsidised compliance support mechanisms for under-resourced schools.