The Executive Secretary of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) says the country has made good strides in improving learning outcomes.  Dr Prince Armah speaking at a Workshop in Koforidua on Monday lauded the support of key stakeholder and partners like USAID, UN and the World Bank.  “I congratulate USAID, who through the Learning project has supported the Education Ministry and the Ghana Education Service (GES) to achieve world-leading progress in improving early grade reading (EGR) achievement scores in public primary schools,” he said delivering the keynote address and official opening of the materials development workshop.  Speaking under the theme: ‘The role of NaCCA in supporting education sector partners to provide quality materials towards improving learning outcomes,’ he congratulated USAID’s support to the Ministry as a long-standing one and a partnership that keeps giving.  Dr Armah disclosed that USAID has made huge investments in providing reading materials since it started partnering with the Ministry of Education. USAID Partnership For Education in Ghana through learning activity alone has supplied 3.1 million teaching and learning materials, locally developed and context relevant in all 11 local languages of Instruction, to schools to support the Early Grade Reading program. It has also supplied 4.2 million supplementary reading materials, in English and local languages, as part of providing a rich reading environment in schools, to enable all Kindergarten (KG) 1 to Primary (P) 3 public primary pupils have access to and use the books to develop reading skills.  “USAID has made huge investments in these materials to support the education system and continues to support the curriculum reforms for the Basic education sector. “This they did through Learning’s Transition to English (T2E) Program, in collaboration with NaCCA, developing English teaching and learning materials for B1 to B3, based on Ghana’s new curriculum and international scientific research to help teach children to read in English,” the NaCCA boss said. Dr Prince Armah said NaCCA is going to help smoothen the materials development process. “We are going to support and expedite the validation process, so the books can get in the hands of pupils to read as soon as possible. NaCCA will also ensure the continued use of the materials (both local languages and English) by pupils and teachers in classrooms,” he said. He mentioned the significance of the English Materials Development workshop and other processes for the T2E program which he said cannot be overemphasized as it supports the new curriculum. “I thank the Education Minister, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh for his foresight and great leadership which has so far enabled the sector to make giants strides. I also thank the Learning team for the hard work in organising the materials development workshop.