POLOKWANE – While the national department of basic education has denied a shortage of textbooks in Limpopo, saying that deliveries are on track with 90% of textbooks having been delivered, this is of no use to the remaining 10% of schools that are still awaiting textbooks.
Simultaneously the provincial department of education says there is only 1% of textbooks outstanding.
Spokesperson for the national department, Elijah Mhlanga, said the provincial department had engaged in an intensive exercise to ascertain shortages for the 2014 implementation grades. He said a supplementary order valued at R17 million was made to resolve the shortages, and they had since delivered most of the books received from the publishers.
He said in a statement that it was important to note that it was the responsibility of the schools to retrieve all books given to learners last year as it became unaffordable for government to keep on replacing books that were not returned.
He said this, and the migration of learners at the start of the academic year were the main challenges faced by the department in ensuring that all learners had textbooks.
Provincial department spokesperson, Pitsi Mabola said schools starting new methods of learning and teaching were also a factor. “You use the data of the prior years to order the material for the next academic year. Obviously the data will never tally 100%.
“But the department has delivered the books ordered and January to March is used as a mop-up period to ensure that any shortages are rectified. Shortages will then be addressed and filled in April and May,” he promised.
He added that of the 1% (according to him) outstanding, only half still had to be ordered while the rest had to be collected from schools that had overestimated their needs.
Contrary to the figures reported by both the national and provincial departments, primary and secondary schools in and around the city said they had experienced shortages and been in contact with the provincial department in this regard, to no avail. Only one school said they had not had a problem.
Approximately 1 751 learners in the Zoutpansberg school circuit had not had history textbooks since 2012 and a delegation of 15 people handed a memorandum of complaints to the provincial department last Wednesday.
According to the delegation, the non-delivery of textbooks to the schools in this area was discovered after a curriculum support meeting held at the former Makhado College of Education recently. The delegation said the problem affected schools in the Nzhelele East, West and the Zoutpansberg North Circuit in the Makhado area.
Schools sent requisitions but books were never delivered and educators were teaching without textbooks, they said.
With the schools only expecting to receive their outstanding material at the end of April or beginning of May, this means textbooks will still be outstanding by the time learners are expected to write tests.
A principal from one of the secondary schools in the city, who did not wish to be identified, said they were in need of almost 50% of their gr. 12 textbooks.
Other school principals reported that they had made alternative plans to ensure that learners had textbooks, but did not want to elaborate what the plans were.
When asked what the provincial education budget of R23,9 billion (48,5% of the province’s total budget) would be spent on Mabola said the department faced a major backlog regarding infrastructure and that was where a large amount of money would be spent. “We have been working hard with different companies and contractors to get rid of the pit latrine systems in schools as well as improving on the buildings, and in many cases repairing of schools damaged by rain in rural areas.
“We as the department do not want to see the death of another child because of bad infrastructure. We are looking at ways to get all the children of the province access to education and making funds available for scholar funds. The department is focused on making today even better than yesterday and making tomorrow much better than today.”
