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The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) will from next term introduce a Quick Response (QR) code on textbooks to enable school authorities to differentiate between approved and unapproved reading materials. 

The Director-General of NaCCA, Professor Edward Appiah, who disclosed this yesterday, said the move had become necessary to curb the sale of reading materials that were claimed to be endorsed by the council. 

QR codes
“We are coming up with QR codes which will be on all approved textbooks so that anybody who buys them can just scan and know all the details, including when it was approved, the quantity in circulation and other vital information.

“As I speak with you now, my team is working on them and they will be in the next set of books that would be coming,” he said.

He made this known when the council embarked on an inspection of textbooks in some public and private schools in Accra.

The exercise formed part of NaCCA’s mandate to ensure both private and public schools use authorised textbooks and other materials in teaching.

The Director-General, accompanied by his team, visited the Mantse Tackie Adabraka Presby School, Calvary Methodist 1 Basic School and Saint Paul’s Lutheran School. 

Vulnerable
Prof. Appiah noted that the exercise was paramount because private schools especially were vulnerable to publishers who were in the market just to make profit.

“For the public schools, it’s sometimes difficult to enter because they take their books from the government.

But when it comes to the private schools, they deal with publishers directly so they discuss issues with them and then buy the books,” he stressed.

He also noted that the council currently had a Legislative Instrument (LI) being worked on by the Attorney-General, which if passed by Parliament, would enable it to punish anyone who defied its directive on using unapproved books.

“So, this sensitisation is not a one-day show, and as you’re aware we came here unannounced and that’s what we will be doing.

Not only the schools, we will also target bookshops and see what materials are being sold to schoolchildren,” Prof. Appiah stressed. 

Sole authors
The Director-General of NaCCA also advised tutors and parents to refrain from purchasing textbooks authored by only one person.

He explained that the council believed that books written by, at least, three or more people were likely to be enriched with more knowledge and would be well written for use by the children.

“Take RME, for example, and just one person has authored it; I don’t think it helps.

“So, henceforth, books that are going to be approved are going to be authored by two or three persons, besides those who contributed,” he added.

Prof. Appiah, however, noted that the council was not trying to restrict teachers and tutors to using only approved textbooks for their preparations and referencing.