A spokesperson for the Education Ministry, Mr. Kwasi Kwarteng, has assured that basic schools across the country will receive textbooks for the new curriculum for upper and lower primary by March this year.

It’s been three weeks since the basic schools reopened on January 18, 2022 and are yet to receive the prescribed textbooks for teaching and learning from the government.

The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has raised concerns over the delay in the distribution of textbooks by the government.

President of the Association, Rev. Dr. Isaac Owusu, said teachers are worried the academic calendar may be affected by this delay.

“When the teachers are teaching the lesson, the child may need a reference material to do his or her homework, to read ahead of the next day activities but if the child is not having any reference material and the teacher comes to class and the teacher uses his or her resource material, if the parent is unable to afford any of the private textbooks, it means this child will have no access to reference material to learn…the textbook is the primary source of reference to that child,” he told JoyNews in an interview on Monday.

Mr. Kwasi Kwarteng explained that the government is working to make the textbooks ready for schools.

While acknowledging the importance of the textbooks as teaching and learning materials, he emphasised that the current curriculum is not textbook-centered.

He said the new curriculum for upper and lower primary denotes that textbooks are supplementary reading materials for students.

“Let me take the opportunity to also clarify something…Whiles, we do not underrate the significance and the importance of textbooks, I also have to state on record that if you look at this standard-based curriculum, it is not textbook-centered. That is what we also probably have to be abreast with it. If we want to make it a textbook-centered that will be a reversal to the old curriculum we were using. But of course, it is not in a way suggesting that textbooks are also not important,” he said.

According to Mr. Kwarteng, the Ministry is hopeful the basic schools will receive the textbooks by March.

“I can confirm that March this year, we are going to start with the printing and distribution of the textbooks to the various schools…the entire process is scheduled to begin in March and so we are looking at March and beyond but what is most important is that we are going to get the textbooks to them and it’s going to help as a supplementary reading material,” he stated.