President of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Rev Isaac Owusu, has expressed disappointment in the delayed release of approved textbooks under government’s new curriculum for basic schools.
According to him, in 2019, when the Ghana Education Service (GES) started the implementation of the new curriculum at the KG and primary level, the GES trained about 168,000 within a week with the assurance that the old curriculum together with its old textbooks were going to be made obsolete.
Due to this, he revealed that teachers and schools were asked to discard these textbooks with the view that the new ones will be approved by National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) and supplied by the minister for education through GES. However, he stated that schools and teachers at the basic level are yet to receive the full complementary delivery of these textbooks.
“With the issue of the new curriculum and its related matters, it has not helped all of us… Since 2019 till date, the schools have received five textbooks out of the eight subjects they are doing under the new curriculum. I will say that we have to commend our teachers because if you look at how resourceful the teachers have become – they themselves going online to do research without anybody giving them motivational support, doing everything possible to get the children to understand the new curriculum.”
Rev Isaac Owusu
The issues surrounding the supply of textbooks, Rev Owusu highlighted, extends to the junior high schools, whereby implementation of the new curriculum is yet to commence. He noted that for the junior high schools, the teachers are also yet to start training, which equally extends to the secondary schools although preparation is underway for their curriculum.
“The implementation of the new curriculum at the junior high schools has not even started… The stakeholders are being given the relevant documents to make their input, but the junior high schools they are yet to have the training. So, it has not even started at all at the junior high schools.”
Rev Isaac Owusu
Teachers resort to use of unapproved textbooks
Touching on the reasons for government’s delay, Rev Owusu stated that the ministry will be in a better position to relay what has actually caused the delay since 2019. He indicated that as a union, GNAT has been advocating and drawing the attention of the ministry together with GES that textbooks play a very important role in the teaching of students.
Additionally, he emphasized that the textbooks are reference materials that students depend on when they are learning during leisure time.
“Even last two years, the ministry assured all of us that it has given the publishers 120 days to finish the publication of all the textbooks. So, we are surprised that till date, we have not had the full complement of textbooks in our schools.”
Rev Isaac Owusu
Regarding the impact of the delay on teaching and learning at the basic level and allegations by the CEO of NaCCA that basic schools have resorted to using unapproved textbooks, the GNAT President sought to justify the actions of such teachers. He revealed that the delay has necessitated teachers and schools to improvise on the best teaching practices under the circumstance.
“If you listen to the CEO of NaCCA yesterday, they said they went round some schools, alleging that some of the teachers were using unapproved textbooks. So, if GES, NaCCA and ministry of education had worked within their own timeline, we wouldn’t see that NaCCA will go to a place and claim that they saw teachers using some unapproved textbooks. When you create a vacuum, certainly somebody will fill it for you.”
Rev Isaac Owusu
