NaCCA to roll out QR code on certified textbooks  – Prof. Appiah

The National Council for Curricula Assessment (NaCCA) will in the coming weeks roll out a QR code to certify approved textbooks in the country, the Director-General of the Coun­cil, Professor Edward Appiah, has announced.

According to him, the code which would be embossed at the back of the books, formed part of a number of measures being adopted by the council to curb the influx of unapproved textbooks on the market, and also help Ghana­ians know which books have been approved or not.

“We are coming out with a QR code which will be on all approved books so that anybody who buys can just scan and will be able to know whether the book is ap­proved, the details, the day it was approved, the quantity in circula­tion,” he said.

Prof. Appiah who was speaking to the Ghanaian Times on the sidelines of an inspection tour of some selected schools in Accra said the measure was to “sanitise the system and cut out the perennial debate” over which books had been approved or not approved.

He said the council was not always comfortable when the issue of approved and not approved comes out and the council was called in to come and do “firefight­ing,” adding that “We think we have to be proactive, get into the space, educate them and let them know how they can realise ap­proved and unapproved books.”

The Director-General said in addition to the introduction of the QR code, the council was also looking at how it could discourage sole authorship.

He said for the textbooks to be enriched, there was the need to have more than one author dealing with all the subject matter, adding that “one of the things that we are trying to do is to avoid soul authorship. We think that for the textbooks to be enriched we need to have more than two or three authors.”

Prof. Appiah said the board of NaCCA had okayed that books that were going to be approved for publication were all supposed to be authored by two or more authors apart from other contributors.

He said the new Legislative Instrument currently before the Attorney General’s Department when approved by Parliament would empower the council to sanction and punish individuals and authors who put books on the market without approval.

Prof. Appiah said even though teachers could use other books for their own research and learning purposes, the council would not countenance any teacher asking their students or pupils to use unapproved books.

He said the council was strength­ening its monitoring wing to perform its functions efficiently and the inspection tour would be extended from the schools to the bookshops as well.

 BY CLIFF EKUFUL

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