Alausa Draws Line on Substandard Textbooks, Raises Ranking Benchmark to 70%, Says books scoring below benchmark cannot compromise quality of education By Beauty Akporido Aroh

The Federal Government has raised the minimum benchmark for textbooks to qualify for national ranking to 70 per cent, in a major move to prevent substandard instructional materials from reaching Nigerian classrooms.

The Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, CON, announced the new threshold in Abuja while receiving the report and ranked list from Nigeria’s first national textbook assessment and ranking exercise, declaring that textbooks that fail to meet the required standard would not be allowed to compromise the quality of education in the country.

The Minister said the exercise was part of the Federal Government’s broader quality assurance drive under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, particularly following the introduction of the revised national curriculum in September 2025.

According to him, the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) developed a standardised assessment toolkit benchmarked against international best practices to determine the extent to which textbooks align with the revised curriculum and meet acceptable quality standards.

He explained that curriculum alignment accounted for 51 per cent of the assessment, while other areas covered language and style, instructional design, technical features, social and cultural compliance, and gender sensitivity.

Dr. Alausa said the 70 per cent threshold was deliberately established to ensure that only textbooks demonstrating an acceptable level of quality qualify for ranking, while publishers whose submissions fell below the benchmark would have an opportunity to identify the shortcomings, make corrections and resubmit their materials.

The assessment, however, exposed wide variations in the quality of textbooks submitted, with some scoring as low as 25 per cent.

Reacting to the findings, the Minister said the results had revealed a situation that could no longer be ignored.

> “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.

Despite the strong criticism, Alausa said the assessment was not intended to shut publishers out of the education system, urging the Nigerian Publishers Association (NPA) and affected publishers to study the results, address identified deficiencies, align their materials with the revised curriculum and resubmit them.

“I’m giving you the olive branch,” the Minister said, while commending publishers who participated in the exercise despite what he described as “pressure and blackmail.”

He disclosed that the national textbook 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.

The Minister also announced that the national curriculum would henceforth be reviewed every three years to ensure that it remains responsive to emerging educational, technological and societal needs.

Providing further insight into the exercise, the Executive Secretary of NERDC, Prof. Salisu Shehu, said the assessment was undertaken in line with the Council’s statutory mandate to develop, review and promote quality educational materials for the Nigerian education system.

He explained that the exercise involved subject specialists, education experts and NERDC personnel working with approved criteria and a standard scoring framework.

According to him, the process incorporated peer review and was not dependent on the judgment of any single officer, with the final results reflecting documented professional assessments and collective expert judgment.

Shehu said the 70 per cent threshold was specifically adopted as the minimum standard for ranking, meaning that textbooks scoring below the benchmark would not qualify for inclusion in the ranked list.

He added that the discovery of textbooks scoring as low as 25 per cent underscored the need for a transparent and evidence-based national mechanism for determining the quality of instructional materials used across the education system.

Reaffirming the Tinubu administration’s commitment to improving education standards under the Renewed Hope Agenda, Alausa said the outcome of the exercise would serve as an important quality-control mechanism, providing publishers with clear evidence of areas requiring improvement while ensuring that only textbooks meeting the required standards progress through the national ranking process.

He assured that the Federal Government would continue to engage publishers willing to meet the benchmark, while those already meeting the standard would be expected to sustain and continually improve their quality.

The Minister stressed that the objective of the exercise goes beyond ranking textbooks to protecting the quality of learning itself, insisting that every instructional material presented to a Nigerian learner must be accurate, curriculum-aligned and fit for purpose.

He said the government would not compromise on quality, stressing that every Nigerian child deserves a textbook worthy of the education they are being prepared to receive.