Delayed Supply of Textbooks: Is Education Ministry Covering Up?

A recent publication by the Ministry of Education (MoE) titled “DISCLAIMER: Government unable to provide textbooks for the new curriculum” on Ghanaweb is laughable because the Ministry of Education and the Minister Dr. Adutwum failed to convince anyone in their attempt to convince the general public and to ensure Ghanaians disregard the truth that Government unable to provide textbooks for the new curriculum.

Delayed Supply of Textbooks: Is Education Ministry Covering Up?

In the said publication, the MoE attempted to debunk the news that public schools will not be provided textbooks until 2024.

The best response that would have given the Ministry a face-saving opportunity would have been “The books are ready” or “We have started mapping the country into zones for distribution” or related responses.

READ: DG of GES & Min. of Education must resign if textbooks are not supplied to schools

If an education stakeholder accuses the ministry of not ready to make textbooks ready for schools until 2024, the best defence you can give is to show reliable proof of textbooks or supply date based on procurement contracts so that the organization or individual can independently verify the claims and proofs you have put forth.

In trying to debunk claims that the government was unable to provide textbooks until 2024, The Ministry of Education also argued that it has provided Resource Packs to some 150,000 teachers. The teacher’s resource pack does not contain the information teachers and learners need to stud, Never. We can never, and we have never provided quality education to learners since there are no textbooks for learners and teachers to use. This means since the new curriculum was introduced, we have been at best half baking our learners. Is Education Ministry covering up its failure to provide textbooks after three years or it is defending the current bad system where curriculums are changed and no textbooks for teaching and learning are provided?

The question the Ministry and the Minister need to answer is this. Is the Teacher’s Resource Pack a textbook? The answer is no. If we have provided 150,000 teachers with Resource packs and each teacher teachers just 40 students at the basic level in public schools, that gives us 6 million schools children leaving home to school for over three years without textbooks. This is ethically not right, no matter the defence that the education ministry is putting up. How many of the staff of the Ministry have their wards in public schools? We are just not proactive in managing our education sector, and we have decided to ignore the basics of education.

Delayed Supply of Textbooks: Is Education Ministry Covering Up? We have been teaching Ghana’s future manpower for over three years without books, and all we get from the ministry is a slap in the face?

It went on to suggest that the said publication was mischief however, it was unable to tell the good people of Ghana, students, parents, and teachers when exactly the textbooks for the already 3 years new curriculum will be provided.

Learners at the basic schools have been without textbooks for three years, and the public is being asked to disregard the news of books to be made available in 2024. One would expect that the MoE of Education will provide dates on which procurement contracts were signed for the production and supply of textbooks and the exact month in which schools will be supplied as well.

Instead, the public was told in the MoE DISCLAIMER publication that all contracts that will lead to the production of textbooks have been signed and publishers are expected by these agreements to deliver the books in 120 days.

The basic question is, when was this contract signed, and when will the 120 days elapse? Answers to these questions would help us hold the Education Minister and the Ministry of Education accountable if they fail to get the books ready.

Assuming that the said contracts were signed at the beginning of May 2022, we should expect the books in our classrooms by the end of September 2022.

READ: DG of GES & Min. of Education must resign if textbooks are not supplied to schools

The disclaimer from the Education Ministry has no merit, and the earlier the Minister and the Ministry of Education accept that they have failed, the better for us. The good people of Ghana, our learners in basic schools, and their hard-working teachers deserve better. One would expect that the Minister of Education would resign from the post by now.

READ: 2022 Private WASSCE: Disobey these rules and fail the NOV-DEC

This disclaimer publication by the Ministry of Education is an open insult to all stakeholders of education in Ghana. Provide the timelines for the production of textbooks and the publishing houses that have been charged with this mandate. Stakeholders want to verify the information and don’t insult the intelligence of the Ghanaian people. Your “DISCLAIMER: Government unable to provide textbooks for the new curriculum” has no merit.

Source: Ghanaeducation.org