Books are one of the larger costs of Ghanaian schooling and the one parents have the most control over. This guide is what each level actually requires, and where the money leaks.

For how the school system itself works, start here. — Schools in Accra

Who decides what a school may use

NaCCA writes the curriculum and evaluates textbooks, and maintains a list of approved books. GES runs the schools and registers them. WAEC sets the exams at the end and publishes the syllabuses.

Those three facts are the whole of your leverage as a parent. A school choosing from the approved list can tell you which book and why. A school that cannot is worth a question.

The curriculum your child is actually on

Ghana rewrote its basic curriculum from 2019 and the names matter when you are buying:

  • The Standards-Based Curriculum covers kindergarten through Basic 6.
  • The Common Core Programme covers Basic 7 to Basic 10 — which is JHS and the first year of senior high.
  • Senior high then runs core subjects plus an elective track, ending in the WASSCE.

Buy against the current curriculum, not against what a shop has in stock. An older edition written for the previous syllabus is the most common way to waste money on a textbook here.

Ghanaian curriculum reform is continuous

Syllabuses, subject names and book editions have all changed more than once in recent years, and further senior high reform has been in progress. Confirm the current edition with the school before buying anything for a new academic year — including from this page.

Kindergarten and primary

Public schools are supplied government textbooks for core subjects. What you buy is exercise books, a mathematical set, and whatever the school adds.

Private schools issue a booklist each term, and this is where the cost sits: roughly ₵400 to ₵1,500 a term including exercise books, more at schools that require an imported scheme.

How to cut it honestly:

  • Ask which items are compulsory and which are recommended. The list rarely distinguishes, and a good school will if asked.
  • Buy outside the school where the school allows it. Many schools sell the booklist themselves at a mark-up; that is legal and it is not compulsory unless the school says so in writing.
  • Reuse. Textbooks pass down between siblings and between families. Only workbooks that get written in genuinely cannot.
  • Buy exercise books in bulk at the start of the year, not by the week.
  • Cover and name everything. The single highest-return five minutes in Ghanaian parenting.

Reading books are not the booklist

The booklist is the syllabus. A child who reads for pleasure needs something else entirely, and Ghanaian children’s publishing is cheap and good. — Books and bookshops in Accra

Junior high and the BECE

From JHS the BECE starts shaping everything bought.

You need the approved textbook per subject, and then the revision layer that Ghanaian studying actually runs on: past questions and the subject revision series, of which Aki-Ola is the best known.

Use them properly:

  • The WAEC syllabus is free, and it is the actual specification. Download it. It is a better guide to what will be examined than any book written about it.
  • Past questions are for drilling, after the topic is understood. A student who starts with them learns the answers rather than the subject, and it shows in the questions that are phrased differently.
  • Check the year range. A past-questions volume that stops three years ago is missing exactly the papers most likely to indicate the current style.

Senior high

Free SHS covers core textbooks at public senior high schools. It does not cover everything, and the admission list a school sends is its own budget line.

  • Core subjects: English, Mathematics, Integrated Science, Social Studies.
  • Electives depend on the track — General Arts, General Science, Business, Visual Arts, Home Economics, Agricultural Science, Technical. Elective textbooks are the expensive ones and the ones least available secondhand.
  • The prospectus that arrives with an SHS placement lists books alongside buckets, mattresses and provisions. Read it against what boarding students in the year above actually used, not against the list.

— Schools in Accra

University

The economics invert here. Prescribed textbooks are expensive, often not stocked, and frequently not what the course is examined on.

What students actually use:

  • Pamphlets — the lecturer’s own bound notes, sold at the start of a semester. Sometimes the most accurate guide to the exam; sometimes a charge for something that should have been taught. Ask the year above which it is.
  • Photocopied chapters, sold by campus copy shops. Ubiquitous, and straightforwardly a breach of copyright, which is worth knowing even where nobody enforces it.
  • PDFs, passed between year groups on WhatsApp.
  • The library. The Balme Library at Legon and its equivalents hold the prescribed texts on short loan, which is what short loan is for.
  • Secondhand from graduating students, at the end of each year. The best value on any Ghanaian campus, and it is entirely word of mouth.

For a foreign student: do not ship textbooks. Find out what is actually used in the first fortnight.

— Universities in Ghana — Studying here as a foreigner

Professional and technical study

Accountancy, law, nursing, teaching and the technical trades each have their own institute syllabus and their own study texts, usually sold through the institute rather than through bookshops. Buy the current edition from the institute; the syllabus changes and an old text is worse than none.

— Learning a trade

Where to buy

  • EPP Books Services and the academic sellers, for textbooks in print
  • The school itself, conveniently and usually not cheapest
  • Pavement sellers near Circle, Makola and the campuses, for secondhand
  • Publisher direct, for locally published series
  • The year above, which is free and better organised than it sounds

— Books and bookshops in Accra

Two things worth pushing back on

Being made to buy from the school. Many schools sell the booklist at a mark-up. If a school requires it, ask for that in writing, and ask what the mark-up funds. Schools that are straight about this usually have a reason.

Buying a new edition every year. Genuine syllabus changes happen. Annual cosmetic editions are a publishing tactic, and a school that changes editions yearly without a curriculum change is passing a cost to you for no gain.

Schools in Accra Books and bookshops in Accra