The Minister of Education, Innovation, Youth, Sports, Arts and Culture, Sanet Steenkamp, revealed that a budget of N$44 million has been allocated for the procurement of textbooks for the 2026/2027 financial year.

This was in response to IPC MP Abednego Hishoono, who sought clarity regarding the formula used to determine these allocations.

"Regions are required to conduct a textbook audit to identify areas of need for textbooks, and this exercise is carried out on an annual basis manually, and each year money is allocated to the regions," said Dr. Steenkamp. "The money is purely for topping up where additional textbooks and learning support materials are required. Each region, having identified the gaps in the textbook needs, will then prioritise how many more textbooks are needed and in which subjects."

Also responding to concerns raised by IPC MP Bertha Ngifikwa regarding the training of teachers in mismatched subjects, the minister stated that the ministry does not approve teacher training programmes that deliberately contradict the national curriculum for basic education.

"We must know that historically, under the Basic Education Teacher Diploma offered by the former colleges of education, teacher preparation for junior primary to junior secondary phases was structured around recognised fields of study, particularly for grades 4 to 10, where subject-specialised teaching was required. Senior secondary teachers, grades 11 to 12, were trained by the university system. While the majority of student teachers pursued two mutually supportive teaching subjects within the same field of study, a limited number combined subjects from different fields."