Where are the Textbooks for Basic Schools? Stop destroying our children

Where are the Textbooks for Basic Schools? The 2023 academic year has started, and right-thinking members of this nation must begin to ask questions and call the government to order in the only nation on earth where a new curriculum is birthed and four years on, there are no textbooks in public schools.

We cannot continue to deceive ourselves that we have introduced a new curriculum and for nearly 4 years, we are yet to get the full compliant of textbooks for effective teaching and learning.

Who in his or her right senses, buys a farm land, hires workers for the cultivation of crops and fails to buy the needed farm implements and seeds for the farmworkers but ensures that the workers report to work throughout the raining or farming season.? The Ministry of Education is leading Ghana as a nation in managing our education system, just as the scenario explained above.

Parents whose wards are in public basic schools are indeed sleeping because, they do not seem to care about whether teachers have books and other teaching and learning materials for the education of learners.

If your ward is in a public basic school, and you have not realized that, the education of your ward is in a mess, you have a problem, and you need to start asking questions.

Teachers and learners need textbooks and government has failed to provide it.

Where are the Textbooks for Basic Schools? Stop destroying our children. We have gone four years without textbooks, but this government does not care.

All the scare resources have been invested in Free SHS, leaving the very foundation of our education and human resource development at the mercy of demotivated yet hard-working teachers in public schools.

The Education Ministry  urged the public to disregard assertions that government cannot supply basic schools with relevant textbooks for the new curriculum until 2024. But we are in 2023 and the books are still not in.

A statement issued by the Ministry on Friday, May 20 said the provisions of the textbooks have only been delayed but does not mean they would be available in 2024, as some people have stated. Are we serious as a country at all?

In Mid-2022, we are told local publishers have been tasked to print books for distribution to schools.

We are in another academic year and there has not been any official communication whether the textbooks have been supplied to schools. Again, if they have been supplied?, have all the required textbooks been made available.

Do the schools in the hinterlands and cities have enough copies to meet the demands of each class?

READ: 2023 Basic And SHS Academic Calendars Commence Tomorrow, More Details About The Calendar

The Ministry of Education has remained silent on this key issue for the past four months and one would have expected that an official communication on books emanates from the office of the Minister, The Ghana Education Service remains a good servant to the Ministry in failing to ask relevant questions about the textbooks. The GES as an institution in charge of the management of Pre-Tertiary schools must be worried of its failure to press on government and the Ministry of Education to get books for learners and teachers.

In the end, it is the teachers and learners who suffer. The question is how many of those in leadership have their wards in public schools. Do not be surprised to find out that, their wards are in private and international schools where they spend a lot of money to buy textbooks. Why should such persons’ care about the failure of the Education Ministry to supply textbooks to public schools?

READ: BECE Graduates, check out the latest 2022 BECE results update

Our Pre-tertiary Teacher Unions have also not helped. They do not care whether the books are supplied or not.

Teacher Kwadwo has waded into the failure of the Ministry of Education to provide the needed textbooks and other TLRs. In a post sighted by GhanaWebNews.org, the Teacher Kwadwo posted, “At the jubilee house with my colleague teachers. We are here to ask why teachers are to teach without BOOKS & other TLRs.”

The question is, where are the Textbooks for Basic Schools?

Stop destroying our children, their education and their future.