Letter of response by the Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office - school textbooks

Letter from Catholic Parliamentary Liaison Office

March 6, 2013

School Textbooks

The delivery – or non-delivery – of textbooks to schools once again raised its ugly head at the beginning of the school year, with opposition parties claiming that the Department of Basic Education had once again failed to deliver textbooks to a number of schools in Limpopo. The Department, on the other hand, claimed to have learned the lessons of last year, and that it had improved its performance in getting the textbooks to the schools and into the hands of the learners.
In a presentation to the Portfolio Committee on Basic Education yesterday, the Department gave a detailed account of the procurement and delivery of textbooks to provinces – and it was quite an eye-opener, because one is not always aware that it takes some real administrative and logistical dexterity to ensure that the 23 573 schools across the nine provinces are provided with textbooks on time. It does seem that the Department has learned from the experience (and the court orders!) of last year, and that it has significantly improved its delivery system. Thus, as of February, the Eastern Cape had approximately 97% of its textbooks delivered, the Free State 93%, Limpopo, and the Northern Cape and the North-West 99%. The Western Cape, Gauteng and Mpumalanga had 100% of the textbooks delivered. While these improvements must be welcomed, it is still something of an indictment that some learners still lack these much-needed learning resources; if 100% coverage can be achieved in some provinces, it can be achieved in all of them.

So why the delivery discrepancies, we may ask? And some of the committee members did indeed ask. The Department explained that some schools may have changed their language of instruction without informing the Department; others may have started new grades, again without passing on this information. In some instances delivery has been hampered in far-flung areas because of flood damage to roads. There is also the fact of migration of learners across schools, districts and provinces at the start of the school year, which results in shortages at some and surpluses at others. Many of these explanations are reasonable with reference to a target missed by 1% or 2%, but the we may hope that they are not offered again in 2014; the expectation must be for a 100% delivery of textbooks.

We often lament the fact that MPs are not following up on issues, not taking their oversight roles too seriously. Yesterday, the members of the Basic Education portfolio committee did just that – they held the Department accountable. It was just a pity that the Director-General was not there to answer the barrage of questions from both opposition and governing party members; instead, one of his deputies took the flack. Nevertheless, this kind of probing, checking and questioning by MPs can only help to ensure that every learner in all of the 23 573 schools has all the required learning materials in hand from day one in 2014.

Kenny Pasensie
Researcher