NaCCA doesn’t control textbooks for schools – Executive director

NaCCA doesn’t control textbooks for schools according to The Executive Director for the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), Dr Prince Hamid Armah.

The provision of textbooks for the newly rolled out curriculum for basic schools in the country has been a topical issue since it was rolled out in September 2019. If NaCCA doesn’t control textbooks for schools how can schools get the required textbooks?

According to him, the Council has, in the absence of textbooks, provided all public-school teachers from kindergarten to primary six, over 165,000 resource packs to be used as teaching guide whilst waiting for the approved textbooks.

The government has implemented a new educational curriculum for private as well as public schools through the National Council for the Curriculum and Assessment in September of this year.

This is part of the ongoing reforms in the educational sector in Ghana. He said the reforms are in line with global best practices that necessitate that every five years the curriculum should be reviewed.

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Although the GES did not provide the necessary textbooks, the Ghana Education Service started the development of the new 2019-2020 curriculum. This has caused a lot of public outrage as many claim that the delay will have a detrimental effect on academic work. The Ghana Publishers Association has noted that the content of textbooks to be forwarded for final approval to the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment is now being developed.

Dr. Armah said that the absence of textbooks can not be blamed on the council during the 61st awards day celebration of Takoradi Senior High School.

“If the government does not alter the policy direction to develop textbooks simultaneously, the curriculum will not be implemented and textbooks will be produced simultaneously. There was, therefore, a restructuring of the curriculum, no textbooks, in 2010. In 2012, we changed the subjects of the course, with no textbooks. The task is, therefore, to ensure that the system we have does not simultaneously allow the creation of textbooks and curricula.

“We at NACCA anticipated that historic antecedent and decided that we will develop a teacher resource pack, so that, for the first time in the curriculum implementation, there are some documents that align with the curriculum for teachers to use. It will take many years for publishers to finish their textbooks, we have no control over that. They will only present it to us for review and approval,” he noted.

Dr. Armah also stated that a research plan for junior and senior high schools is being reviewed by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment.