PORT ELIZABETH, January 13 (ANA) – The Eastern Cape Department of Education has on Friday, come under fire for allegedly failing to distribute textbooks to 214 schools in the Mbizana district.
This emerged earlier this week during an annual oversight visit for school readiness by members of the provincial legislature.
According to DA MPL, Edmund Van Vuuren, the Mbizana district had placed an order for 863,904 textbooks for 214 schools for Grades 1-12 for a total of 94,084 enrolled learners. The total value of the order was R73,8 million
Van Vuuren said that he was deeply perturbed by the department’s state of affairs, having only procured textbooks during November last year.
Earlier this week, MEC Mandla Makupula, indicated that 15 percent of textbooks for 926 high schools in the province had not yet been delivered.
“On Tuesday, he told the legislature that members would find schools without books and teachers. But to find an entire district without books is indicative of the inadequate support this department is giving our learners to realise their dreams,” said Van Vuuren.
In addition to this, Van Vuuren said that four new secondary schools had opened their doors for new grade 10s in 2014 but had shockingly not received any textbooks for subjects for the past three years.
“This implies that these learners were without books in Grade 10 in 2014, Grade 11 in 2015 and Grade 12 in 2016.”
He said that these schools had to rely on study guides and other literature.
“Reports of the intermittent delivery of textbooks are also surfacing in other districts in the province. It is no surprise that the Eastern Cape has been the worst performer in the matric results for the past six years if the procurement of textbooks cannot be professionally managed,” said Van Vuuren.
However, Department Spokesperson, Mali Mtima said that the delivering of textbooks was based on a “retrieval policy” and dismissed Van Vuuren’s claims.
“We are not starting from scratch when we deliver textbooks, we are topping up. The schools need to retrieve books from learners then the department will top up,” Mtima said.
Mtima said it was not true that four secondary schools in the Eastern Cape did not receive textbooks, namely A.D. Tshayingca, Majavu, Mpeni and Gumzana.
“I don’t know what they are talking about but I will follow it up with the district director, some schools submit textbook requests very late,” said Mtima.
Meanwhile, the Eastern Cape Department of Education said it would adopt a new strategy as it aimed to address the poor 2016 matric pass rate in the province.
The Eastern Cape was once again the worst performing province in the country with a 59.3 percent pass rate. Although the statistics were slightly up from 2015, the province remains at the bottom of the class nationally.
Superintendent General, Themba Kojana, announced on Friday that the department would embark on a new Service Delivery Model for education which was in line with the national norms and standards.
Kojana said affected learners did not have access to quality public education and that it was not possible for small, non-viable schools with a handful of teachers, to produce good matric results.
“An immediate step we will be examining the poor performing schools and, where necessary, move the single digit and small number of learners in matric classes to schools that have the appropriate number of suitably qualified subject teachers,” said Kojana.
“It is both impractical and grossly inefficient to have five to 10 matric learners per subject in a school, as we had in 2016. Learners must have access to the appropriately qualified teachers to prepare the learners.”
– African News Agency (ANA)
