The National Programmes Manager of the Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition, Festus Longmatey, says a survey being contacted by the Coalition has revealed that no school in six regions has received a single textbook from government in the past three years.

This follows the government’s introduction of a new standard based curriculum.

The government was expected to distribute textbooks to the various public basic schools to aid in teaching and learning using the new curriculum, however, as the Minister of Education has admitted there have been challenges with procurement and distribution of books leaving teachers and students to fend for themselves.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express concerning the JoyNews documentary, ‘Ghana’s Schools of Shame’, Mr Longmatey noted that it was rather unfortunate that the Ministry of Education has failed to solve the problem three years after introducing a new curriculum.

“When it comes to the issue of textbooks, for three years now we have come out with a new standard based curriculum. We all expect that at least this should go with corresponding teaching and learning materials for teachers to be able to teach our children in pursuit of delivering the kind of quality education that we want. It is unfortunate that we should hear from our minister that we still have a lot of the text books not going,” he said.

He continued, “Now as a coalition we have also, you know, anything that we do we try to gather evidence on the ground. So as we speak right now, currently our people are on the ground collecting data, information, to verify that really schools have received textbooks. So far, information reaching us so far indicates that no school so far entered has received any form of textbook. 

“We are doing this in about six regions across the country; Greater Accra inclusive, we have the Central Region, we have the Savannah Region, Bono East and the Ashanti Regions. So far they’re still collecting the data, but the data we’re collecting so far indicates that no school so far has received any textbook.

“They don’t have at all; no school entered so far has a textbook. It is only in one school that there is an indication that some text books have arrived at the district education office but those textbooks are yet to be supplied to the schools. So clearly there is a challenge and this needs to be fixed and fixed as early as we can,” he said.