The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Eduwatch, Mr. Kofi Asare has quizzed the Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, the Director-General of GES, Prof. Kwasi Opoku together with the National Curriculum for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) for the long delay in getting textbooks for primary school children.
Following the implementation of the Standard-Based Curriculum in 2019, government has been unable to deliver on her promise to provide public schools textbooks for the realization of the programme. Even though the Ministry of Education in March 2022 gave the assurance of getting the textbooks published and distributed, it has been more than one month but no single textbook has been procured for distribution.
Mr. Asare is not the first person or the EduWatch the first policy think-tank to speak on this worrying issue; several stakeholders the pre-tertiary teacher unions, teachers, education bloggers and recently, the former president of Ghana, John Mahama have all added their voices to the plight of public basic schools due to lack of textbooks but all to no avail.
Speaking on his Facebook page, the Executive Director of EduWatch noted the following.
Today is 9th May; basic schools re-open tomorrow. There are still NO textbooks, three years into the new curriculum era. Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, Ghana Education Service, Naccaghana, where are the textbooks, please?
Textbooks tracker:
—11th April 2019-GES announces new curriculum for primary schools
—12th April 2019-Provide textbooks, reduce class size for effective curriculum -Kofi Asare
—4th Sept 2019-NaCCA asks teachers to use resource packs to teach. Says lack of textbooks is normal.
—26th March 2021: Textbooks to be ready soon; procurement underway-Minister of Education
-17th May 2021-New Curriculum without textbooks worrying-GNAT
—25th August 2021-Eduwatch worried about absence of textbooks in primary schools
—31st Jan 2022-Textbooks to be ready by March-MoE
—9th May 2022-Still no textbooks in public primary schools and JHS.
How are teachers able to teach amidst no textbooks?
For many teachers, they largely depend on the internet to gather information when preparing their lesson notes. That set aside, others also rely on the contents made available in soft copies of lesson notes which have been prepared by their college teachers. Significantly, a few have also purchased some textbooks from bookshops which have been published by certified publishers in the country.
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