The Director General of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), Prof Samuel Ofori Obuobisah Bekoe, has publicly apologised following public outrage over controversial content on gender identity found in a Senior High School teacher manual.

The content was withdrawn after nationwide distribution.

Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express on Wednesday, Prof Bekoe said the council had no hesitation in offering an apology to the Ghanaian public after sections of the Year Two Physical Education and Health (Elective) Teacher Manual were found to be inconsistent with Ghana’s cultural values.

“When you take over a place of liability, on that note, I have no difficulty, on behalf of the organisation, apologising to the public for whatever transpired,” he said.

“But as I said, we are taking strong measures to ensure that these things do not occur.”

The apology follows NaCCA’s decision to withdraw printed copies of the manual, which had already been approved, printed with public funds and distributed to schools across the country.

The manual was developed in 2024 as a supplementary guide to support teachers delivering the new SHS curriculum introduced last academic year.

Concerns were later raised over sections discussing “gender identity,” prompting intense public criticism and calls for accountability.

Host of the programme, Evans Mensah, pressed the NaCCA Director-General to address parents directly, many of whom expressed fear that their children may have already been exposed to the content.

“There’ll be calls today for you, NaCCA to directly apologise to Ghanaians and parents whose children have been exposed to this,” Evans said.

Prof Bekoe responded by indicating that NaCCA was still assessing the extent of exposure, noting that the subject was an elective and not widely taken by students.

“We don’t want to just assume, so we will send officers to the field to find out,” he said. “Because it’s an elective course and not many students take it, it is easier to find out the extent to which there was anything that was done.”

He also suggested that the manual may not have been uniformly applied in classrooms, depending on individual teachers’ perspectives.

“Those who have that kind of perception may teach alongside, but those who are against, even though the guidance will not use it,” he said.

Unsatisfied, Evans again demanded a direct apology to the parents listening to the programme.

“I did not hear a sorry to the parents,” the host insisted.

Prof Bekoe then restated his apology, while rejecting suggestions that the content was deliberately allowed through negligence.

“I said that for everybody,” he responded. “You want me to say sorry, I said that we apologise for this thing being in place, but not to say that we went to sleep and then this thing came in.”

According to him, the content passed through existing review systems but was flagged only after public attention was drawn to it.

“It escaped the system where attention has been drawn to it,” he said. “We have dealt with it, and we are assuring the Ghanaian public that it’s not going to happen ever again.”

NaCCA has since released a revised version of the manual, which it says reflects Ghana’s national values and a biological understanding of gender.