We have no control over textbooks – NACCA

The Executive Director of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), Dr. Prince Hamid Armah says the Council has no control over the provision of textbooks for the new curriculum for basic schools in the country. He says the Council has, in the absence of textbooks, provided all public-school teachers from kindergarten to primary six, over 165,000 resource packs to be used as teaching guide whilst waiting for the approved textbooks.

Government through the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, in September this year, rolled out a new education curriculum for both private and public basic schools. This forms part of the ongoing reforms in Ghana’s education sector. NaCCA has said, the reforms are in line with international best practices, which requires a review every five years.

However, the Ghana Education Service has already started the implementation of the new curriculum for the 2019/2020 academic year, without the provision of the requisite textbooks. This has generated a lot of public outcry as many believe the delay will impact negatively on academic work. The Ghana Publishers Association on their part have indicated that, they are now in the process of developing the content of textbooks to be submitted to the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment for review, and approval.

Speaking at the 61st awards day celebration of the Takoradi Senior High School, Dr. Prince Armah indicated that the absence of textbooks cannot be blamed on the council.

“Unless the government changes the policy direction for the curriculum developers to also develop textbooks concurrently, there will be no occasion where curriculum will be developed and textbooks will come at the same time. So in 2010, there was a curriculum reform, no textbooks; 2012, we changed the course subjects, no text books. So the challenge is that the process we have, will not allow for a concurrent development of text books and curriculum at the same time. We at NACCA anticipated that historic antecedent and decided that we will develop a teacher resource pack, so that, for the first time in curriculum implementation, there is some documents that align with the curriculum for teachers to use. It will take many years for publishers to finish their textbooks, we have no control on that. They will only present it to us for review and approval,” Dr. Prince Armah noted.

Dr Prince Armah further indicated that the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment is in the process of reviewing Junior and Senior High School curriculum.

Story: Eric Nana Gyetuah