Textbook crisis now over for Limpopo

It would seem that the textbook saga of the past two years is drawing to its conclusion with issues surrounding the delivery of textbooks reportedly having been resolved.

Speaking at the department of education’s warehouse in Seshego during a media briefing on Monday, premier Stanley Mathabatha and education MEC, Dikeledi Magadzi explained the new procedure regarding the procurement and delivery of learning and teaching material for 2014 at length.

“The provincial executive council has played a pivotal role this year, emphasising the commitment of the Limpopo provincial administration that education is indeed a societal matter and the responsiblity of all the citizens of the province,” Mathabatha said.

According to the action plan for 2014, the department of basic education would ensure that every learner had access to a school bag containing at least a set of textbooks, stationery and workbooks that were required for each grade.

Mathabatha said education planning, budgeting and provisioning were mainly based on learner numbers. Although unreliable, learner data was used for provisioning classrooms, water and sanitation, nutrition programmes and teacher posts per school.

He said these numbers were collected at the beginning of the year, verified on a quarterly basis and published as the Annual School Survey at the end of each school calender year.

To ensure correct ordering figures, schools had to supply detailed information regarding, amongst other things, teachers, learners, their subjects, and the languages they were taught in. The numbers were then inflated by 18% for gr. 12 and 5% for gr. 7 to 9, to cater for any shortages when learners changed schools.

A total of 6 071 451 textbooks and teacher guides had been ordered and final deliveries were expected by September 23. The South African Post Office has been selected as the warehousing and distribution agent. “They will be directly responsible for textbook deliveries at schools,” Mathabatha said, adding that the stationery tender had already closed and deliveries were expected to commence from October 1.

He further said the quality of textbooks had been assured for at least five years, and all schools had to commit to textbook retrieval. “We make an urgent call on all schools and parents to make sure that all the textbooks the learners used throughout the year are handed in at the end of the year in a good condition to ensure that all the learners for the next year are set when it comes to textbooks,” he said.

Magadzi said challenges had already been identified and rectifying measures had been implemented to find solutions to ensure that textbooks were available to learners and educators before the 2014 school year. “We plan to have all textbooks and learning materials in place in Limpopo schools in the first week of November to ensure that there are still three weeks left to do the mopping up and tie up the last loose ends for 2014,” she said.

To prevent miscommunication between the department and schools, a toll-free line will also be set up for schools to interact directly with the department on any issues. The toll-free line would be launched at a later stage as soon as it was finalised.

Speaking on behalf of the DA, Desiree van der Walt said they welcomed the premier and MEC’s feedback. “A repeat of the injustice done to learners for the past two years must never happen again,” she said. Van der Walt said the DA would still monitor distribution and delivery of the textbooks in Limpopo.