Back to Africa Check

No, document showing revised Ugandan school calendar fake

An article shared on Facebook on 11 September 2020 claims Uganda’s education ministry has revised its calendar for the rest of the academic year. 

Data from CrowdTangle, a public insights tool owned and operated by Facebook, shows that the article has been shared over 50 times, reaching more than 30,000 people on one public Facebook group alone. 

The article includes a document, also shared independently on Facebook. Another post has shared this document many times to reach almost 800,000 people in different groups. 

The document, dated September 2020 and from the “Ministry of Education and Sports”, shows 2020 term dates for Ugandan primary, secondary, technical or farm schools, and community polytechnics. It also lists the dates for national examinations. 

There has been a push to reopen schools in Uganda, particularly from private school owners. So has the government heeded their call?

Fake document

The Ministry of Education and Sports Uganda has shared screenshots of the document, stamped “FAKE” in red, on its official Twitter account.

The ministry tweeted: “#FakeNews: The document showing a revised School Calendar and a Time Table for candidate classes that is making rounds online is fake!!! Kindly treat it with the contempt it deserves.”

Republish our content for free

Please complete this form to receive the HTML sharing code.

For publishers: what to do if your post is rated false

A fact-checker has rated your Facebook or Instagram post as “false”, “altered”, “partly false” or “missing context”. This could have serious consequences. What do you do?

Click on our guide for the steps you should follow.

Publishers guide

Africa Check teams up with Facebook

Africa Check is a partner in Meta's third-party fact-checking programme to help stop the spread of false information on social media.

The content we rate as “false” will be downgraded on Facebook and Instagram. This means fewer people will see it.

You can also help identify false information on Facebook. This guide explains how.

Add new comment

Restricted HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a href hreflang> <em> <strong> <cite> <blockquote cite> <code> <ul type> <ol start type> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h2 id> <h3 id> <h4 id> <h5 id> <h6 id>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
limit: 600 characters

Want to keep reading our fact-checks?

We will never charge you for verified, reliable information. Help us keep it that way by supporting our work.

Become a newsletter subscriber

Support independent fact-checking in Africa.