More than a third of Eastern Cape schools are short of furniture that include desks, tables and chairs.
And, according to a consolidated list of needs published by the Bhisho Education Department, this amounts to 549 866 pieces of furniture.
The consolidated list is contained in an affidavit filed by the Provincial Education Department in compliance with a January court order issued by the Mthatha High Court.
The Legal Resource Centre litigated the matter on behalf of the Centre for Child Law.
But, while the LRC said the publication of the list of school furniture needs is a positive step, attorney Cameron McConnachie, said it was based on information provided to district directors last year.
"Since then the Department has conducted a full audit using 23 officials from the Department of Education in the Eastern Cape and approximately 130 unemployed graduates. And they've been to every school in the province," he said.
"So, we've realised and the Department's realised that the previous list was inaccurate but it still needed to be filed in terms of the court order. But, the really important date is the end of next month (August) when we'll be able to see whether the audit has yielded the results," said McConnachie.
He said each school would be able to online and check whether their furniture needs have been accurately recorded.
"The next big date will be the end of April next year (2017) by when, hopefully, every school in the province (EC) will have all of their furniture needs fulfilled."
In partial compliance with these court orders, the department reported that, since July 2015, approximately 390,000 pieces of school furniture have been delivered or are in the process of being delivered to schools in the Eastern Cape.
McConnachie said he's pleased with the Department's response saying they've taken the furniture audit very seriously.
"They've put a lot of resources into making sure that enough people are out in the field recording the needs. They've given us regular updates in spreadsheet format setting out which schools have been visited and which schools still need to be visited."
"They've got quite a sophisticated system of ensuring that the needs are accurately recorded so at this stage we definitely very pleased with the progress. Obviously there's still a long way to go and the big question is whether they're going to make the budget available to purchase all the furniture that is needed. But, as we're going along furniture is being purchased and delivered so we are getting there," said McConnachie.
