Bridging the gaps: enhancing teachers' proficiency in marking and feedback practices for Uganda's competency-based curriculum

Uganda's Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC), introduced in 2020, aims to equip learners with 21st-century skills through learner-centred teaching, formative assessments, and criterion-referenced evaluation. Despite its potential, teachers in Mpigi District face significant challenges in implementing marking and feedback practices essential to CBC's success. This qualitative multiple-case study, grounded in Biggs’' Constructive Alignment Theory, examined teachers' proficiency in these practices in two public lower secondary schools. The findings revealed systemic gaps, including inconsistent marking methods that rely on traditional practices, limited use of rubrics for competency-based evaluation, and generic, nonactionable feedback. Structural constraints, such as oversized classes, inadequate training, and resource shortages, exacerbate these issues, undermining CBC's intended objectives of fostering critical thinking and problem solving. Recommendations include mandatory rubric training, targeted continuous professional development (CPD), collaborative marking systems, resource investments, and efforts to reduce class sizes. Addressing these issues is critical to bridging the policy-practice gap, aligning formative assessment practices with CBC's transformative goals, and improving educational outcomes in secondary schools across Uganda.