NaCCA introduces ‘QR codes’ on approved basic school textbooks
All new basic school textbooks with effect from September this year will have bar or QR codes to curb incidents where students fall victim to the purchase of unapproved textbooks, the Director General of National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), Prof Edward Appiah has said.
Introduction of the bar codes, the Council for Curriculum Director-General said is to alert prospective book buyers to know which books have been approved by NACCA so they would know which ones to purchase or not.
He announced this when he led a team of staff from NACCA to visit some selected public and private basic schools in Accra. The visits were aimed at knowing first-hand the nature of textbooks being used in public and private basic schools in the country.
He said unlike private basic schools which buy textbooks directly from publishers, it was very difficult for public basic schools to use unapproved textbooks since they are supplied by the government through the Ghana Education Service.
Professor Edward Appiah says he is confident that the Quick Response Codes (QR) codes would help control the influx of unapproved textbooks into the market and also prevent parents and other users from patronizing them.
The Curriculum and Assessment Director stated the monitoring of the textbooks would be extended to the various regions to ascertain the state of approved textbooks available in schools in the various regions across the country.
He cautioned head teachers not to allow booksellers to influence them to buy unproved textbooks for their pupils since it could have an impact on their education if there were infractions of wrong information in the manuscript or the book.
Prof. Appiah stated that National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) would soon begin a nationwide sensitization on how to identify approved and unapproved books among other policies.
“There is a Legislative Instrument currently at the Attorney General Department and would be placed in parliament very soon for consideration and this would impose heavy punishment for selling unapproved books to schools,” he said.
The NaCCA Director General explained further that the new law will also sanction publishers who persistently flout the laws and such people would be blacklisted from the industry by law.
