MOEYS/GES to brief bidders on textbooks devt project

Not less than 70 million dollars might be required to finance the development of textbooks for Primary and Junior Secondary Schools (JSS) for a period of five years.

Out of this, a minimum of 15 million dollars would be needed to procure books for only JSS as an urgent measure for the 2004 - 2005 school year.

These figure were quoted in an updated document on the implementation of the Ministry of Education Youth and Sports and Ghana Education Service (MOEYS/GES) textbook development and distribution policy issued on Thursday in Accra.

The document was issued at the 10th consultative panel discussion of the Ministry and education development partners, at which Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu launched the Education Strategic Plan (ESP).

The two-day meeting was under the theme: "Implementing the Education Strategic Plan" and is being attended by about 20 development partners.

Other issues to be discussed include: "The Operationalisation of the ESP"; "The Key Challenges of ESP"; "The Education Act 1961"; "The Study Leave Policy" and "Technical and Vocational Training (TVET)".

The rest are: "Textbook Distribution"; "Multiplicity of Interventions at the District Level- Its real Challenges" and "FCUBE Stocking Report, What it Does Tell Us and What is the Way Forward".

The document said to enable the Ministry to procure relevant books for the basic schools, bidders would be briefed on Friday and issues relating to the Textbook Development Project, which were raised by bidding publishers, would be discussed.

The briefing, the document said, would be a follow up to invitations put up in the Ghanaian Times and the Daily Graphic by MOEYS/GES for interested publishers to purchase syllabuses of the titles they were interested in.

The document explained that the textbook development and distribution policy together with its operational annexes under separate cover was finally presented to the Cabinet in 2002.

Cabinet, it said, studied the policy and gave approval for its use as the blueprint for the Ministry's future textbook procurement programmes.

It said the slow resolution of the language policy delayed the finalisation of the document, adding that, after the approval by the Cabinet in April 2002 there was a further delay in the implementation of the policy due to the problem of funding.

The document stated further that as part of an urgent move to meet the textbook requirements for basic schools, especially JSS, a committee was formed and mandated to find an immediate and workable solution to the problem of textbook procurement that met the requirement of the new syllabuses.

It said based on the committee's recommendation, the Ministry initiated the implementation of the policy by inviting the bidders.

The document said the composition of evaluation and district panels for the evaluation and selection of the textbooks to be produced by publishers, training of the panels on their respective roles, evaluation and selection of textbooks submitted by publishers were activities to be undertaken next year for the procurement of relevant textbooks.

Other activities would be the award of contracts for the supply of books to districts and the distribution of textbooks to public basic schools.