The federal government has raised the minimum benchmark for textbooks to qualify for national ranking to 70 percent, as Tunji Alausa, minister of education, warned that substandard instructional materials would no longer be allowed in Nigerian classrooms.
Alausa announced the benchmark on Thursday in Abuja while receiving the report and ranked list from the country’s first national textbook assessment and ranking exercise.
The assessment found significant variations in the quality of submitted textbooks, with some scoring as low as 25 percent.
The minister said the exercise was part of the federal government’s quality assurance drive following the introduction of the revised national curriculum in September 2025.
He said the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) developed a standardised assessment toolkit, benchmarked against international best practices, to ensure textbooks align with the revised curriculum and meet acceptable quality standards.
According to Alausa, curriculum alignment was the strongest component of the assessment, accounting for 51 percent, while other criteria covered language and style, instructional design, technical features, social and cultural compliance, and gender sensitivity.
He said the 70 percent threshold was deliberately set to ensure that only materials demonstrating an acceptable level of quality qualify for ranking.
Alausa said publishers whose submissions fell below the benchmark would be allowed to identify deficiencies, make corrections and resubmit their materials.
Reacting to the assessment results, the minister said the findings had exposed deficiencies 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.
Alausa, however, said the assessment was not intended to shut publishers out of the education system.
He urged 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,” he said, while commending publishers who participated in the exercise despite what he described as “pressure and blackmail”.
The minister said the national assessment would be conducted in three cycles to cover 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.
Alausa also announced that the curriculum would henceforth be reviewed every three years to ensure it remains responsive to emerging educational, technological and societal needs.
Salisu Shehu, executive secretary of NERDC, said the assessment was conducted in line with the council’s statutory mandate to develop, review and promote quality educational materials for the Nigerian education system.
Shehu said the exercise involved subject specialists, education experts and NERDC personnel who worked with approved criteria and a scoring framework.
He said the process incorporated peer review and was not dependent on the judgment of any single officer, adding that the results reflected documented professional assessments and collective expert judgment.
Shehu said the 70 percent threshold was adopted as the minimum standard for ranking, meaning submissions below the benchmark would not qualify for the ranked list.
He said the scores as low as 25 percent underscored the need for a transparent and evidence-based national mechanism for determining the quality of instructional materials.
Reaffirming President Bola Tinubu’s commitment to raising education standards under the renewed hope agenda, Alausa said the assessment would serve as a quality-control mechanism for textbooks in the country.
He said the exercise would provide publishers with clear evidence of areas requiring improvement while ensuring that only materials meeting the required standard advance through the national ranking process.
The minister 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 improve their standards.
Alausa said the objective went beyond ranking textbooks to protecting the quality of learning in Nigerian schools.
He said every instructional material presented to Nigerian learners must be accurate, aligned with the curriculum 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.
