Quick Response Codes (QR codes) have been implemented by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) on textbooks to assist users in distinguishing between approved and disapproved ones.
Professor Edward Appiah, the Director-General of NaCCA, revealed this information in an exclusive interview with the Daily Graphic. He recommended parents and educators to make sure the textbooks they purchased included the QR Code.
“A textbook without a QR code means that it has not been approved by NaCCA and,therefore,might not be suitable for use by our learners in school,” he stated.
NaCCA decided to implement the QR code in response to the overabundance of inappropriate books and other teaching and learning materials (TLMs) entering the book industry, the majority of which end up in classrooms for student usage.
“By our mandate, NaCCA is to review and approve the quality and quantity of textbooks and other TLMs of educational values for the pre-tertiary institutions,” Prof. Appiah said.
He clarified that the Council had chosen to employ QR codes to assist sanitize the sector and guarantee that only approved textbooks were used in our schools after learning that certain schools were utilizing unapproved textbooks.
He acknowledged that occasionally schools were unable to distinguish between books that were permitted and those that were not, but he was certain that with the introduction of the QR code, books without it would not be purchased.
The NaCCA head walked the Daily Graphic through the QR code usage procedure, explaining that in order to use it, users have to download the code scanner from the Apple App Store for iPhone users or the Google Play store for Android phones.
He clarified that the public may use the special NaCCA scanner to scan the QR code on the front or back of the book, which would indicate that it had been approved. He also mentioned that if the QR code on the book was different, the special scanner would not be able to scan it.
When asked what had happened to the books that were already on the market and had been approved by the NaCCA prior to the code’s introduction, Prof. Appiah replied that the Council was in negotiations with the Ghana Publishers Association to obtain a hard copy of the code so that it could be included into books that had already been given the go-ahead.
