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The High Court in Makhanda has ordered the Eastern Cape Department of Education to ensure that every learner at every public school in the province is provided with textbooks and stationery by no later than 31 March 2022.
The Legal Resource Centre was in court on Tuesday on an "urgent basis" on behalf of Khula Development Forum, parents, and learners.
LRC attorney Cameron McConnachie said the order also requires the Provincial Department of Education to provide a report to the court in seven days' time, setting out its compliance with the order and detailing exactly which schools have not received stationery and textbooks and when they would receive it.
"That really been one of the biggest problems leading up to this court case is that there has just been this complete lack of information from the Department about when children are going to be receiving their textbooks," he said.
McConnachie said the Court further ordered the Bhisho Education Department to report to the Court at the end of September on the progress of procurement and delivery of stationery and textbooks for 2023.
He said the Department's budget appears to be affected by the province's austerity measures, adding that he hoped that the full written judgment, in about a week's time, "will give some pointers to government on what is and isn't permissible in terms of austerity budgets."
McConnachie said that they filed papers last month and while waiting to get into court, there had been ongoing delivery of stationery, but he said the delivery of textbooks does not really seem to have gotten underway yet.
"We're told that there are large amounts, up to 80%, of textbooks that have arrived in the warehouses and are now being sent out to schools," he said.
McConnachie said initially schools were told that the delivery of textbooks would happen at the end of May.
"Once the court case began they told us, in their papers, that it would be by the end of April. So, there was just this uncertainty and no real explanation as to why textbooks that are sitting in warehouses can't get to these schools by the end of the month."
