Minister of Education, Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa, has set 70 per cent as the minimum benchmark for textbooks to qualify for ranking, drawing a firm line against substandard instructional materials and declaring that books falling below the required standard cannot be allowed to compromise the quality of education in Nigeria.
Alausa made the declaration in Abuja while receiving the report and ranked list from the country’s first national textbook assessment and ranking exercise, describing the outcome as a further demonstration of the Federal Government’s commitment, under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, to strengthening quality across the education system.
The Minister said the assessment forms part of the Government’s broader quality assurance drive following the introduction of the revised national curriculum in September 2025.
He explained that the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) developed a standardised assessment toolkit, benchmarked against international best practices, to ensure that textbooks are properly aligned with the new curriculum and meet acceptable standards of quality.
According to him, curriculum alignment was the strongest component of the assessment, accounting for 51 per cent, while other criteria covered language and style, instructional design, technical features, social and cultural compliance, and gender sensitivity.
Alausa said the 70 per cent threshold was deliberately established to ensure that only materials demonstrating an acceptable level of quality qualify for ranking, while giving publishers whose submissions fell short an opportunity to identify their deficiencies, make the necessary corrections and resubmit.
The assessment revealed significant variations in the quality of submitted textbooks, with some scoring as low as 25 per cent.
Reacting to the findings, the Minister said the results had exposed 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.
He however, stressed that the assessment was not designed to shut publishers out of the education system, urging the Nigerian Publishers Association (NPA) and affected publishers to study the results, address identified shortcomings, align their materials with the revised curriculum and resubmit them for consideration.
“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 further 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.
The Minister added that the curriculum itself would henceforth be reviewed every three years to ensure that it remains responsive to emerging educational, technological and societal needs.
Providing further context on 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 brought together subject specialists, education experts and NERDC personnel who worked with an approved set of criteria and scoring framework.
The process incorporated peer review and was not dependent on the judgment of any single officer, with the results reflecting documented professional assessments and collective expert judgment.
Prof. Shehu noted that the 70 per cent threshold was specifically adopted as the minimum standard for ranking, meaning that submissions below the benchmark would not qualify for the ranked list.
He said scores as low as 25 per cent further underscored the need for a transparent, evidence-based national mechanism for determining the quality of instructional materials across the education system.
Reaffirming President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s commitment to raising the standard of education under the Renewed Hope Agenda, Dr. Alausa said the outcome of the exercise would serve as a quality-control mechanism, providing publishers with clear evidence of areas requiring improvement while ensuring that only materials meeting the required standard advance through the national ranking process.
He assured that the Federal Government would continue to work with publishers willing to meet the benchmark, while those already meeting it would be expected to sustain and continually improve their standards.
The Minister stressed that the objective goes beyond ranking textbooks to protecting the quality of learning itself.
He said every instructional material presented to a Nigerian learner must be accurate, curriculum-aligned and fit for purpose, adding that the Government would not compromise on quality because every Nigerian child deserves a textbook worthy of the education they are being prepared to receive.
