The lack of textbooks covering the new syllabus designed for basic schools in the country is biting hard in various basic schools in the country including the Asuogyaman District in the Eastern Region.
Basic school teachers in the country have for the past two years been faced with the challenge of implementing a new standard-based curriculum without the required learning materials.
A visit by GhanaWeb to some schools in the Asuogyaman District suggests that the situation continues to impede academic activities as teachers have no option but to depend on the search engine, Google for the necessary information to teach the pupils.
Since the rollout of the new curriculum in 2019, teachers across the country are yet to access the requisite learning materials intended to aid teaching and learning in the various basic schools.
The new standards-based curriculum which was implemented in September 2019 was rolled out from Kindergarten to Class 6 in primary schools.
Headmistress of the Anum Presby Primary ‘A’ school, Madam Harriet Obuobi in an interview lamented over the consequences of the situation.
“There are so many challenges, the first one is books, we don’t have textbooks…because there are no textbooks, teaching becomes a problem, very big problem for this school. The teachers have to Google to get some information,” she said.
According to the school head, teachers and pupils are “managing” with the situation despite the difficulties.
Madam Obuobi who said the situation has persisted over the past two years said teaching materials were yet to be supplied to reflect the change in the curriculum. “They have changed the curriculum but after that, no books for us to use,” said the school head.
She therefore appealed to the education authorities to provide the required textbooks for use by school authorities. She said, “We are appealing that if they have changed the curriculum, they should help us with textbooks so that the teaching will be easier for us.”
Miss Aperfa Joyce, a class two teacher at the Anum Presby Primary ‘A’ school told GhanaWeb that she has no option but search for her topics online to teach her students.
“Because we don’t have the textbooks, we can’t teach them, you have to Google a lot of things before they get understanding of it…I go through a lot, ‘googling’ before coming to teach them and since I do not have any handbook to teach, I get a little bit tired” said Miss Aperfa.
She added that alternatively, teachers depend on textbooks available for the privileged few pupils to teach their colleagues.
“A parent would buy a textbook for the ward and a teacher would be using it and even when you’re having a group study, you can’t do it unless you do photocopies and put it in front of them and it’s very expensive so that is the problem we’re facing now,” she said.
According to her, “the children don’t engage in anything because when you’re teaching, it’s only teacher-centered because they don’t have the textbooks, they don’t have idea of what you’re teaching.”
The situation was no different from the Anum Presby Primary ‘B’ school.
Headmistress of the school, Madam Philomena Dogbe said teachers have no option but to improvise with contents from the syllabus to teach.
“They [teachers] are managing, because the curriculum is there so they are using it to prepare their lesson notes and they are teaching with it,” she said.
A class six teacher also said the “Syllabus was changed to curriculum about two years ago and since then, there have been no textbooks Even the curriculum, it should have been one set for each class but it is just one set for the whole school,” he lamented.
According to him, some teachers do not have access to the curriculum to teach the pupils.
Adontenhene of the Anum Traditional Area, Okoagyeman Kwasi Anyane V decried the situation and charged the government to as a matter of urgency address the problem.
Meanwhile, Eastern Regional Director of Education, Margaret Nsiah-Asamoah when contacted by GhanaWeb, declined any comment on the matter but directed all enquiries on the issue to the national headquarters.
