MoE gives deadline JHS core textbooks will be ready in classrooms

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, the Junior High School (JHS) core textbooks by the end of January 2024 will be ready in classrooms, the Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum said in an interview monitored by Thisterm.com.

The textbooks based on the Standards-based curriculum he said will contain samples of reviewed questions for BECE to make the final-year Junior High School students familiar with what they would be answering during the examination

Fortunately, before the month (January) ends our core textbooks will be going to the classrooms. I believe it will become abundantly clear to the students the type of questions they should be expecting for BECE,” Adutwum said.

We have counted the number of classrooms at the Junior High School level across the country, we have a spreadsheet that shows the number of students, so when the textbooks get to the region they will be packed in school by school and delivery will happen directly from the region to the classrooms,” the Minister for Education said in the interview.

Meanwhile, Africa Education Watch says the 2024 Basic Education Certificate Examination is likely to be conducted for Junior High School (JHS) students without their access to any textbooks to aid in preparation for the BECE.

In an interview with Joy FM monitored by Thisterm.com, the EduWatch official said this is because there has been a shift in the curriculum since the finalisation of the Common Core curriculum by the central government.

He explained that the Common Core curriculum did not reach finalisation on the same day as the primary school curriculum adding that the first batch of students using the Common Core curriculum would be sitting for the BECE next year.

Mr Asare emphasised that if efforts are not made to provide textbooks between now and June, these students might be “writing BECE without seeing any textbooks” as they have commenced learning under the Common Core.

“That’s why I don’t see the junior school textbooks happening anytime between now and the next Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE),” the Africa Education Watch official said speaking on JoyFM’s Super Morning Show.

He said the unavailability of textbooks in various Junior High Schools is due to an issue between the publishers and the government alleging that the textbooks publishers say they have not been paid by the central government.

“When they were promised that the government was giving them 100% local content in the publication of textbooks, they were all happy, and they went and procured loans to print textbooks, and then they have not been paid. They owe about 90% of what they do,” he said.