Jane Salihu
The Federal Government has raised the minimum benchmark for textbooks seeking national ranking to 70 per cent, in a move aimed at preventing substandard instructional materials from reaching Nigerian classrooms.
The Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, announced the new threshold in Abuja while receiving the report and ranked list from the country’s first national textbook assessment and ranking exercise.
Alausa said the exercise was designed to strengthen quality assurance in the education sector following the implementation of the revised national curriculum in September 2025.
He said the assessment, conducted by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), used a standardised toolkit benchmarked against international best practices to determine whether textbooks adequately meet the requirements of the new curriculum.
According to him, curriculum alignment accounted for 51 per cent of the assessment, while other areas examined included language and style, instructional design, technical features, social and cultural compliance, and gender sensitivity.
The Minister said the 70 per cent benchmark was deliberately set to ensure that only textbooks meeting an acceptable quality standard would make the national ranked list.
He said the assessment exposed wide differences in the quality of submitted materials, with some textbooks recording scores as low as 25 per cent.
Reacting to the findings, Alausa described some of the materials as unfit for Nigerian learners, saying, “Some of the books being used in our schools, primary schools, junior secondary schools and senior secondary schools are trash. Some of these books are scoring 25% or lower. Is this the way our children should be educated?”
He, however, said publishers whose books failed to meet the benchmark would not be permanently excluded, urging them to study the assessment results, correct identified deficiencies and resubmit their materials.
“I’m giving you the olive branch,” the Minister told publishers, while commending those who participated in the assessment despite what he described as pressure and blackmail.
Alausa explained that the national assessment would be conducted in three cycles covering all levels of the basic and senior secondary school curriculum.
He said the first cycle covers Primary 1 and 4, JSS 1 and SS 1; the second covers Primary 2 and 5, JSS 2 and SS 2, while the third covers Primary 3 and 6, JSS 3 and SS 3.
The Minister also announced that the national curriculum would henceforth be reviewed every three years to keep it responsive to emerging educational, technological and societal needs.
Earlier, the Executive Secretary of NERDC, Prof. Salisu Shehu, said the assessment was conducted as part of the Council’s statutory responsibility to promote quality educational materials.
Shehu said subject specialists, education experts and NERDC personnel participated in the exercise using approved assessment criteria and a scoring framework, with peer review incorporated into the process.
He explained that the assessment was not based on the judgment of one individual, but on documented professional assessments and collective expert judgment.
The NERDC boss said the 70 per cent threshold meant that textbooks scoring below the benchmark would not qualify for the national ranked list, adding that the discovery of materials scoring as low as 25 per cent showed the importance of having a transparent and evidence-based system for assessing instructional materials.
Alausa said the exercise was ultimately about protecting the quality of learning rather than merely ranking textbooks.
He stressed that every instructional material presented to Nigerian learners must be accurate, aligned with the curriculum and fit for purpose, assuring that the Federal Government would continue to work with publishers prepared to meet the required standard.
