Vice-Chairman of the Education Committee of Parliament, Dr Prince Hamidu Armah, has said more than 1,000 new textbooks were approved before he left office as the Head of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA).
Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express, Dr Armah explained that although it took a while for publishers to bring those materials, the process of approval was very advanced.
“You produce the materials, you bring to NaCCA, they will go through with you the period of time, two, three months because [for] every document, we have three different accessors accessing them. Once they are done, they give you very comprehensive feedback and publishers have to incorporate that feedback and bring them back for evaluation,” he explained on Monday.
This process, in the Legislator’s view, makes it difficult for a textbook to be approved on the first count.
Dr Armah further stated that after the materials are approved, they are then published online with a copy sent to the Education Ministry.
According to him, the approved textbooks are available for sale of which the private sector is patronizing but the government is yet to provide the textbooks to the public schools.
His comment comes after the Education Minister, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum admitted the inability of the government to supply textbooks to basic school pupils, despite the introduction of a new curriculum two years ago.
Dr Adutwum made this comment when he appeared before Parliament last week to answer some urgent questions, including questions on the procurement of textbooks for the implementation of the new curriculum.
According to the Minister, the government recognises the relevance of textbooks in education and is working assiduously to deal with the situation.
He was optimistic that once the relevant processes have been exhausted, the distribution of textbooks will begin across all the regions and districts in the country.
Meanwhile, the Member of Parliament for Kwesimintsim said the curriculum was produced in 2019 and was published on the website, adding that on June 1st, Publishers were required “to take the source document, that is the curriculum materials, and use them to develop their textbooks.”
He said there has been a fundamental shift in the education sector with regards to the initial understanding of learning “which is the ability to recall information swiftly, ability to do swift competition and our already approach in learning to demonstrate understanding and competency.”
“So that fundamental shift even requires that the producers of textbooks are taken to some training. I remember the stakeholder’s engagement with publishers to be able to understand the comparatives and underpinning thinking behind the standard principal republic,” he added.