The council named the TLMs to be assessed to include teaching and learning aids such as chats, maps, puzzles and games.

It did not indicate a deadline for the submission.

Unapproved books

The Executive Secretary of NaCCA, Dr Prince H. Armah, who explained the new curriculum to the Daily Graphic in an interview in Accra, said the move was to ensure that only “wholesome” books were put out there for the patronage of the public.

The call follows the successful completion of the development of the first phase of the pre-tertiary curriculum for kindergarten to primary six for the Ghana Education Service (GES) for implementation.

The move is also an effort by the NaCCA to rid the market of unapproved textbooks, as parents and schools begin preparations to stock their libraries with new books ahead of the new academic year.

Short code

Dr Armah explained that as part of that effort, the NaCCA would soon introduce a short code to enable parents and schools who wanted to buy textbooks for their children or schools to check whether a book had been approved for the market for general consumption or not.

Beware

He admonished parents and schools, especially basic schools, to ensure that books sold to them were approved by the council.

Dr Armah said nobody was supposed to sell any textbook on the market, streets or bookshops without having the books approved by the NaCCA.

He said it was the sole responsibility of the council to approve textbooks before they could be sold to the public, adding that in the past, the directive was not fully followed, “but for now we are determined to ensure that the right books are out there”.

He said the short code to be introduced was part of various measures being introduced by the council to clean up the process, which also included the publication of the list of approved and unapproved books on the NaCCA website.

The Executive Secretary said because many people did not have access to the Internet, the NaCCA made it more accessible to users by developing the short code for that category of people.

He gave an assurance that the government would not buy any textbook or supplementary material from anybody if that book or that material had not been approved by the NaCCA.