A former Executive Secretary of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), Prince Hamid Armah, has stated that the institution’s biggest challenge is that although it has to authorize books before it enters the market, it does not have the legal mandate to sanction persons who circulate unauthorized textbooks and materials.

“One of the challenges that NaCCA is facing at the moment is that on one hand, they have the mandate of approving material for teaching and learning in schools but on the other hand, they do not have the mandate to enforce these imperatives so if someone has a book and refuses to bring it to NaCCA, there is no enforcement policy or even compel them to withdraw the books from the market.”

Speaking on the Point Blank segment on Eyewitness News, Dr. Armah stated that although it is the duty of NaCCA to authorize books before they are used in the educational system, there is still a number of publishers who do not go by the rules.

“As it is now, there is right to expression guaranteed by our constitution so anybody can sit anywhere and write books, but the law requires that if you are going to send the books to our educational institutions particularly the pre-tertiary level, then you need to submit these materials to NaCCA. For those whose market audience is the public sector and they want GES to use them, They will come to us. But there are others that don’t care about seeking to get the public sector to procure their materials and therefore they want to leverage the 25% contribution of the private sector in the education service delivery. They want to take that market share. They are the people who generally do not bring their material for assessment.”

He added that the books which caused an uproar in the country recently were not approved by NaCCA before they were circulated, but the publishers have started the process with NaCCA now.

“The books are not part of the approved books. All the books that have been mentioned with unpalatable and unsuitable content and expressions are not part of the books that have been approved. We need to understand that just as it is unwholesome for someone to consume expired tomato paste, it is also unwholesome for students to use such material with unsuitable content. There is no school under GES that will attempt to procure books that have not been GES or NaCCA approved,” he stated.

Badu Nkansah Publications, publishers of some textbooks meant for basic school pupils were widely lambasted over portions of the books said to have denigrated the Ewe ethnic group in Ghana.

The textbooks – History of Ghana, Text Book 3, was authored by Badu Nkansah and Nelly Martinson Anim; while the Golden English Basic 4 was authored by Okyere Baafi Alexander both of which were said to contain bigoted content targeted at Ewes.