The Federal Government has raised the minimum benchmark for textbooks to qualify for national ranking to 70 per cent, following an assessment that found some instructional materials scoring as low as 25 per cent.
Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, announced the new threshold in Abuja while receiving the report and ranked list from Nigeria’s first national textbook assessment and ranking exercise.
According to a statement issued by the Special Adviser on Media and Communications to the Minister, Mr. Ikharo Attah, on Friday, the exercise is part of the Federal Government’s broader quality-assurance drive following the introduction of the revised national curriculum in September 2025.
Alausa said the benchmark was deliberately set to ensure that only textbooks meeting acceptable quality standards reach Nigerian classrooms, while publishers whose submissions fall below the threshold would be given an opportunity to correct identified deficiencies and resubmit their materials.
The Minister said the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council, NERDC, developed a standardised assessment toolkit, benchmarked against international best practices, to evaluate textbooks for alignment with the revised curriculum and other quality requirements.
He disclosed that curriculum alignment accounted for 51 per cent of the assessment, while other criteria covered language and style, instructional design, technical features, social and cultural compliance, and gender sensitivity.
The exercise, he said, had exposed wide disparities in the quality of textbooks submitted for assessment, with some scoring as low as 25 per cent.
While reacting to the findings, Alausa said the situation was unacceptable, stressing that substandard instructional materials could no longer be allowed to undermine learning outcomes.
“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? If this happened with the government, it will not happen with this government,” he said.
The Minister, however, said the exercise was not intended to exclude publishers from the education sector, urging the Nigerian Publishers Association and affected publishers to study the assessment results, correct identified shortcomings and align their materials with the revised curriculum before resubmission.
“I’m giving you the olive branch,” Alausa said, while commending publishers who participated in the exercise despite what he described as “pressure and blackmail.”
He explained that the national assessment would be conducted in three cycles to cover all levels of the basic and senior secondary school curriculum.
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.
Alausa also announced that the national curriculum would henceforth be reviewed every three years to keep it responsive to emerging educational, technological and societal needs.
Also speaking, the Executive Secretary of NERDC, Prof. Salisu Shehu, said the assessment was conducted by subject specialists, education experts and NERDC personnel using approved criteria and a defined scoring framework.
He said the process incorporated peer review and collective professional judgment, rather than relying on the assessment of any individual officer.
Shehu said the 70 per cent threshold would ensure that the national ranking remained evidence-based and transparent, adding that the poor scores recorded by some submissions reinforced the need for a credible mechanism for determining the quality of instructional materials.
