The National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) says it is taking steps to eliminate substandard textbooks on the market.
According to the Director-General of NaCCA, Professor Edward Appiah, all textbooks to be approved by NaCCA will now have more than one author. This is to ensure that the books are well-written and meet the required standards.
Speaking to Citi News in Accra on Wednesday, Prof Appiah said the board of NaCCA has approved the new measure, which will be implemented soon.
“One of the things that we are trying to do is to avoid sole authorship. We think that for the textbooks to be enriched, we need to have more than two or three authors. So, the board has approved that henceforth, books that are published should be authored by two, three people, apart from other contributors,” he said.
In addition to requiring multiple authors, NaCCA is also planning to introduce Quick Response Codes (QR codes) on textbooks. These QR codes will help users to differentiate between approved and unapproved textbooks.
The council made the announcement during an inspection tour of selected public and private schools in Accra.
Director-General of NaCCA, Professor Edward Appiah, said the council had noticed that some schools were using unapproved textbooks. He said the QR codes would help to ensure that only approved textbooks were used.
“What we have realised is that in a couple of weeks and days, you hear NaCCA’s name, and it is about whether the books are approved, or bad books are in the system. So we have taken it upon ourselves to visit the schools, monitoring and sensitising because we realise that sometimes the schools do not even know the difference between approved and unapproved books. And the market is such that publishers will want to sell, so they will bring out anything, and we think that we have to come out this time to sensitise the schools, especially the private schools,” he stated.
“So far, we have gone to some of the private and public schools. We saw one or two books which were not approved… Of course, we are coming up with QR codes which will be on all approved books so that anybody who buys such books, you can just scan, and you will be able to know whether the book has been approved,” he stated.